1°

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

O NON A*AV>

_^S fr/z/t /f/f/f/ . //,rr- _V // /; // /t/;/r>/

In the
Alaskan Wilderness

By

GEORGE BYRON GORDON
ScD., F.R.G.S.

PHILADELPHIA

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY

1917

Copyright, 1917,
Bv George B. Gordon

4 6tti

to my brother

Lieutenant MacLaren Gordon

killed in action during

the battle of the somme

OCTOBER 21, IQl6

1510834

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface 9

Introduction 13

CHAPTER

I. A Meeting on the Yukon .... 21

II. The Lower Kantishna 35

III. A Deserted Town 46

IV. The Kingdom of Denali 63

V. NlGGERHEAD AND MUSKEG 83

VI. On the Upper Kuskokwim .... 95

VII. The Village Life 109

VIII. The Lament of the Native. . . . 132

IX. Shaking Hands with the Willows 143

X. Adrift on Bering Sea 155

APPENDIX

A. Canoe Construction 167

Table of Distances 172

B. The Population of Northern

Alaska 186

C. The Language of the Kuskwoga-

miut 236

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lieutenant MacLaren Gordon . .Frontispiece

PAGE

Solitude. A Scene on the Kantishna

River about io p. m 21

The Same Scene at 10.30 p. m. The Sun

has come Out from Behind a Cloud . 28
The Kantishna Below the Fork .... 35
Getting Lunch on the Kantishna River 37
Denali from the North. After a Sketch
by the Author from a Point just Be-
low the Fork 44

Scene on the Upper Kantishna 46

Scene on the Upper Kantishna 46

Our Camp at Lake Minchumina 51

Scene at Lake Minchumina Looking

Northwest from Our Camping Place . 53
View Looking South from Lake Min-
chumina 60

Denali as Seen from Our Camp at Lake
Minchumina. After a Sketch by the

Author 62

MacLaren Gordon at Lake Minchumina 69
The Author on the Ten Mile Portage . j6
The End of the Ten Mile Portage . . 85
6

PAGE

The Upper Kuskokwim or Tichininik at

the Portage 92

The Deserted Cabin on the Tichininik . 99
In the Deserted Cabin on the Tichininik ioi

A Woman of the Sikmiut 108

The Belle of the Sikmiut no

The Sub-Chief of the Sikmiut 113

The Son of the Sub-Chief of the Sikmiut 115
The Daughter of the Sub-Chief of the

Sikmiut 117

A Man of the Sikmiut. A Mixed Eskimo

and Indian Type 119

On the Lower Kuskokwim 122

A Kuskwogamiut Man, Showing Labrets

and Earrings 124

An Old Burial Place of the Kuskwoga-
miut 126

Two Kuskwogamiut Graves 131

Another Form of Kuskwogamiut Grave 133

A Lone Grave on the Tundra 135

The Ten Commandments in Picture-Writ-

ing 137

Entrance to the Kozgee at Ogovik . . 138
Two Kuskwogamiut Hunters in Their

Kyaks 140

The Author on the Lower Kuskokwim . 142
Canoe Construction 167

7

PAGE

Canoe Construction 170

A Tinneh Indian with Spear 195

Birchbark Baby-Carrier 197

Image Used by the Minkhotana .... 199
Two Views of a Birchbark Vessel Made

by a Sikmiut 202

A Wooden Vessel Made in Two Pieces . 204
A Wooden Vessel Made in a Single Piece 204
A Wooden Vessel Made in a Single Piece 206
A Woman's Coat Made of Duck Skins . . 211
A Man's Coat Made of Skins of Geese. . 213

A Man's Decorated Boots 215

A Pair of Woman's Boots 215

A Pair of Grass Socks 218

A Woman's Headdress 220

A Group of Kuskwogamiut Basketry . . 222
Kalthkapok (Big Raven). The Great

Axe Used in the Kozgee 227

An Ancient Inscription in Picture-Writ-

ing 246

Sketch Map Made Under the Direction

of Chief Henry at Tanana for the

Author in 1905 back cover

Map of Alaska Showing the Route . back cover
Map of Central Alaska Showing the

Kantishna and the Region About Lake

Minchumina back cover

8

PREFACE

This book is the result of a journey into unknown
parts of Alaska made in 1907 by my brother,
MacLaren Gordon, and myself together. On
my part the trip was undertaken in the interest
of the University Museum in Philadelphia, and
on my brother's part by the grace of Providence
and his own generous impulse. He was returning
from a hunting trip when we met at White Horse.
We united our forces and our expedition was at
once complete and perfect in all respects and
eminently fitted for the work in hand and for
any work whatsoever. We made the journey
without guides and without other assistance,
which means that we traveled in the simplest
and best way.

A word would seem to be in place here in
reference to the appearance at this time of a
book that might have seemed more timely ten
years ago. The incidents related took place in
1907, but their interest, far from being dimin-
ished, has rather been enhanced in the interval.

It is remarkable that although the last decade
has witnessed great activity in exploration in
many parts of the world, and although Alaska

9

itself has been largely opened up, the heart of
that Northern realm remains unknown and
unexplored.

Our journey, a mere reconnaissance, was suc-
cessful in attaining the objects intended. Of
importance is the fact that it opened up a field
for further work and brought into view larger
tasks to be accomplished as its proper and natural
sequel. Our time was too short to permit of
the extensive and intensive studies that the
subject demanded and that would have required
unlimited time. It was not my good fortune
to return to these tasks and they still remain to
be done.

After my return in 1907 I put together my
notes and observations and worked up the col-
lections, but realizing the incompleteness of my
materials and possessed by the thought of some
day returning to the work, it was not my inten-
tion to publish the results of our brief reconnais-
sance until I should be able to combine with them
the more complete observations for which they pre-
pared the way. It is because the opportunity
for making these more complete observations did
not arrive that I feel justified in publishing this
narrative, with its many imperfections, of which
no one can be more aware than myself.
10

Although I have been unable to achieve the
fruits of a prolonged and intimate acquaintance
with the peoples whom we met with on our
journey through the Alaskan wilderness, nothing
can take away the satisfying memory of that
journey; for every day was filled to the full
with the things that make life good, and the
recollection of those days carries with it mem-
ories that have power to soften even the loss
of the brother with whose strong and inspiring
personality and affectionate fellowship these
memories are filled.

I wish I could have done the subject justice,
for not only did the country appeal to us, but
to my mind there never has been a time when
the waste places of the earth possessed so great
an interest for civilized man as today. To a
world grown tired and sick and full of fear,
there is rest and refreshment and healing power
in the breath of the brooding wilderness and
even the peace of the desert makes an unwonted
appeal. The soil that was consecrated by the
plow and that mothered mankind has been
defiled, and till it has been made clean again
the untilled lands that lie stark outside the
tempest — the haunts of the wild beast — are more
pleasant and more like home.

II

I want to record my thanks to all the friends
through whose support my several journeys on
behalf of the University Museum have been
undertaken. Their names are written large in
the history of local education as they are written
large also in my esteem.

12

INTRODUCTION

Although Alaska has during recent years
engaged much attention on the part of the
United States Government, financiers, promoters
and the public generally, there are, within its
vast area, regions that remain unknown and
unexplored. Ten years ago — in 1907 — this asser-
tion applied with greater force, especially to the
interior parts, even than it does today. At that
time, as today, the region lying west of the
Tanana and between the Alaskan range and
the Yukon was the most extensive of the unex-
plored sections. Shut off as it is by the great
barrier of the mountains, and lying across the
heart of Alaska, this region is, on account of
its physical condition, not easy of access. To
this situation must be attributed the fact that
it is still in large part an unknown and uninhabited
wilderness.*

* Mr. H. M. Eakin, of the United States Geological Survey,
himself an Alaskan Explorer, writing in 1916, says of the region
which I am describing, "Part of the region serves as hunting
ground for natives of both Tanana and Kuskokwim tribes, but
there are large areas that apparently are seldom if ever visited
by either natives or whites." BULLETIN 642-H of the United
States Geological Survey. Washington, Government Printing
Office, 191 6.

13

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance
of Alaska in the future of the United States and
of the world. Its known resources, only recently
discovered and lying virgin still, are small com-
pared to the stores of wealth that further explora-
tion and discovery will bring to light. It is
indeed a very rich and unimagined storehouse,
containing in great abundance many of the raw
materials on which the industrial life of the world
depends.

In these days of destruction, we are entitled
to take some comfort in the thought that, in
lands lying remote from the sounds of strife,
there are stores upon which future generations
may draw at will to repair the waste. When
mankind shall have been delivered and the earth
redeemed, the happier peoples to whom the
inheritance will belong, will find hope and
encouragement still, as men have always done,
in the hidden places and the regions where man's
dominion has not been known. In the general
work of reconstruction and in rebuilding the
highways of civilization, the great Alaskan wil-
derness will contribute largely to the materials
that will be required. When the search for gold
has become a memory, the iron, the coal, the
copper and the oil will continue to feed the fur-

naces and supply the wants of the industrial
world.

The purpose of the journey described in these
pages was not an ambitious one. It was nothing
more than a reconnaissance of certain districts
to determine the opportunities and conditions
for an extended study of the native life of
those districts. In the main part of the regions
traversed the almost entire absence of native
life was a disconcerting circumstance that did
not promise well for the ultimate ends in view.
The central basin, drained by two great river
systems, consists of timber land and swamps
flanked by hills and mountain ranges, with abun-
dance of game but almost without human in-
habitants. Never at any time has the population
of that district been very numerous in compari-
son with its size and resources, and during the
last half century it has dwindled until there is
hardly even a remnant left. I do not pretend
to give all the results of our journey in these
pages; although only a reconnaissance, it was
successful in obtaining extensive collections of
everything that the natives produce.

We found on the lower Kuskokwim a rich
opportunity for the observation of an aboriginal
population who preserve their ancient customs

IS

and whose conduct of life is highly interesting and
instructive. It is time that these customs were
made the subject of close and detailed record,
for it will soon be too late. Many changes have
certainly taken place since our visit. The native
of Alaska is very susceptible to new influences,
and in the presence of the trader and other white
neighbors he dies away or else his entire scheme
of life breaks down, leaving him, where he sur-
vives, with only a corrupt and fragmentary tradi-
tion of his own. In such a condition he is unable
to make any very trustworthy contribution to
our knowledge of primitive life. The search for
such knowledge is our chief reason for invoking
his help and the only reasonable excuse for
intruding upon him. I recommend the subject
to anyone who has a taste for ethnological study
and who is willing to spend two years on the
tundra. I can assure him of a rich return for
his trouble in the kindly human interest that
attaches to the picturesque and primitive life on
the Kuskokwim. That region is much more
accessible now than it was in 1907, for since
that time settlements have been established on
the lower Kuskokwim and there is now, I
believe, steamboat communication on that river.
The best way, therefore, of reaching the native
16

villages is to start from St. Michael at the
mouth of the Yukon and either cross the "Yukon
portage,, or, still more easily, await a small
steamer that now sometimes passes over the great
flats that exclude larger vessels from the Kus-
kokwim, and that make all navigation give that
part of the Alaskan coast a wide berth.

Observations that we made during our journey,
upon the geography of the country, its physical
features, its resources and its few Indian inhabi-
tants, have been given to the public only in brief
fragments. In the course of time similar and
more thorough observations will be made by
others with more time at their command. Maps
will be prepared, routes will be surveyed and
reports will be written, but in some respects the
experiences of the explorers to whom this work
may be assigned will not be the same as ours.
I venture, therefore, to entertain the thought
that this narrative may not be entirely without
value as an Alaskan document, although it makes
no claim at all other than to be an accurate
record of personal adventure and individual
effort.

Prior to our trip in 1907, one expedition had
penetrated into the central Alaskan wilderness
and reached Lake Minchumina. It was a govern-

17

ment expedition sent out by the War Department
under Lieutenant Joseph H. Herron in 1899.
Lieutenant Herron, with five companions, entered
the territory from the south through a low divide
in the Alaskan range. His route lay roughly
from south to north and terminated on the
Yukon, at the mouth of the Tanana. We pro-
ceeded from the Tanana River by way of the
Kantishna River and our route, lying roughly
east and west, crossed Herron's at right angles.
Herron's report, which was published by the
War Department in 1901, contains a map of
his route. On that map Lake Minchumina, the
point at which our trails crossed, appears for
the first time. The Kantishna is not mentioned
in Herron's report, and although he stated the
fact that the lake drains into the Tanana, his
statement, together with his map, shows that
Herron made no claims to personal knowledge of
the stream that flows from the lake, and his
sketch of the lake itself, which he crossed in
winter on snowshoes and with dog sleds, is a
rough outline. All the maps of the region pub-
lished since 1901 are based on Lieutenant Herron's
map, of which we were ignorant in 1907 when
we made our journey.

The map of the Kantishna region that accom-

18

panies this volume is based entirely on our own
observations, but we had no instruments for
surveying and the map professes only to show
roughly the contour of the lake and its drainage.
It is, nevertheless, although ten years old, the
first map to be published based on personal
knowledge.

The Kuskokwim River was known on its lower
course to the Russians as far as the mouth of
the Tacotna. In 1898 it was surveyed from its
South Fork (the Istna) by J. E. Spurr and
W. S. Post of the United States Geological Sur-
vey, who started from Cook Inlet and ascended
the Skwentna and crossed over to the Istna.
The North Fork of the Kuskokwim, which the
Indians call the Tichininik, was not known to
white men prior to our journey, except to one
or two wandering trappers of whose presence at
certain points we saw signs.

Thus our route lay for the most part through
country either entirely unknown and unexplored
or rarely visited. We were the first to travel
across Alaska from the Tanana to Bering Sea
by this route.

Writing of his journey within the boundaries
of the same wide region, Lieutenant Herron sums
up his experiences in a sentence that shows how

19

even a well organized government expedition
may meet with difficulties in Alaska.

"This report represents the earnest efforts
of a small party in unknown regions against
extraordinary obstacles, deserted by guides,
caught by winter, deprived of transportation
and hampered by scarcity of food."*

If I have sought to be explicit in the foregoing
statement it is not because I have a personal
interest in establishing any priority or in claiming
any credit whatever in connection with explo-
ration and discovery in Alaska or elsewhere. In
such claims we were in no way interested, and
for this reason we had next to nothing to say
on the subject. I am well aware that the work
of exploration is going forward year by year
under the direction of hardy and competent
men. I have, therefore, been careful to indicate
the precise nature of our work which had no
geographical purpose whatever and which had
reference only to the inhabitants.

♦EXPLORATIONS IN ALASKA, 1899, War Department,
Washington, Government Printing Office, 1901.

20

IN THE ALASKAN WILDERNESS

CHAPTER I
A Meeting on the Yukon

In June of 1907, the ice broke on the Yukon
and carried out, according to programme, its irre-
sistible spring drive to the sea, leaving that river
free to navigation for the two thousand five
hundred miles of its length. The little fleet of
steamers waiting at White Horse, the head of
navigation, prepared, each in turn, to make its
first trip of the season down to Dawson, the
far-famed city of the Great Northwest. My
brother and I had taken passage on the first
boat and on an early June morning we swung
out from the pier at the bright and busy little
town of White Horse that rules the destinies of
the Canadian Yukon.

To make the Yukon trip is an easy matter.
From Vancouver the ocean going steamers ply
the wonderful inside passage northward for three
days and nights, a thousand miles to Skagway,
the terminus of the White Pass Railroad which
runs one hundred miles through very striking

21

mountain scenery to White Horse, the head of
navigation on the great Yukon. From White
Horse a flat-bottomed stern-wheel steamer runs
down to Dawson in forty-eight hours. At Dawson
another steamer of the same type takes up the
passenger and descends the river to St. Michael
on the shores of Bering Sea.

People who have not made the Yukon trip are
unaware of what a very impressive stream it is
and few are familiar with the romance and tragedy
of its history. That history may be said to have
begun within the last quarter of a century and
the names of Harper and Henderson and Carmac
and Skookum Jim the Indian and his cousin,
Tagish Charlie, are at the beginnings of tradition
and their deeds are passing into mythology.
It was in the eighties and nineties that these stout
Trojans, perhaps half a score all told, led appar-
ently by some vision or by the voice of some desire,
singly or in pairs, broke into the Unknown and
found — The Klondike.

It is not my purpose to tell the history of the
Yukon; that task has been well done by men
who saw it all and who took part in it. I have
just read one of these authentic records of adven-
ture,* a book that will take its place in history

* EARLY DAYS ON THE YUKON by William Ogilvie.
22

and literature with the narrative of Raleigh, the
letters of Cortez and the log books of Captain
Cook.

During those two June days on the steamer
between White Horse and Dawson my brother
and I had time, as we watched the wild and pic-
turesque shores go by, to recall to our minds all
the tragedy and romance of the days that are
gone forever, and we had time also to map out
an adventure of our own, which was to cross
Alaska by an untried route.

Two years before, we had visited the Tanana
River and interviewed sourdoughs, hunters, trap-
pers, government officials, Indians, half-breeds,
missionaries, Rt. Rev. Innocent Pustinsky, Bishop
of the Russian Church of Alaska, and, in short,
everyone we met, for information about the
same route which at that time first attracted us.
Except for one old Indian, no one knew any-
thing about it and all advised against the attempt.*

Chief Henry of the Tanana Indians, however,
gave us some information by the aid of the Rev.
Mr. Jules Prevost, the missionary at Fort Gibbon,

* Judge James Wickersham was then at Fairbanks, where I met
him and learned from him that he had, the summer before, gone
some distance up the Kantishna in a steamer chartered for the
purpose. His purpose was to climb Mount Denali. He struck
across an unknown country, reached the base of the mountain,
but was unable to make the ascent.

23

who acted as interpreter. Chief Henry drew on
a piece of birchbark, and I copied, a map of the
Kantishna River and of Lake Minchumina. It
was thus that I learned that the Kantishna River,
which empties into the Tanana fifty miles above
its confluence with the Yukon, has its source in
Lake Minchumina, that the Kuskokwim could
be reached from that lake and that the Kuskokwim
itself was "good water." Chief Henry's map
was afterwards our guide in making the journey
of 1907.

The latest government map at that time indi-
cated Lake Minchumina, and a dotted line showed
the supposed position of a river flowing from the
lake eastward into the Tanana, the great tributary
of the Yukon which drains the country to the
south in the eastern part of the territory of Alaska.
Another river called the Kuskokwim, with its
source somewhere near the lake, flowed in the
opposite direction clear across the map and
entered Bering Sea about 400 miles from the
mouth of the Yukon, the only Alaskan river that
exceeds it in size. The mouth of the Kantishna
was well known in 1905 to hunters, traders and
prospectors and to others who traveled on the
Tanana, into which it poured in a considerable
torrent.

24

The plan that first occurred to us in 1905 was
to reach Lake Minchumina by way of the unex-
plored Kantishna, make our way across the
divide to the headwaters of the Kuskokwim and
descend that river to Bering Sea. After reaching
the sea, we proposed to steer our canoe along the
coast for 400 miles to St. Michael at the mouth
of the Yukon. The whole summer would be
short enough for the journey, and as it was then
autumn at the time of which I am writing, we
gave up the trip reluctantly and turned elsewhere.
It was two years later, in the spring of 1907,
as I have said, that I found an opportunity of
escaping from the city and from civilization and
was drawn again towards the North.

Arriving on the Tanana in June, 1907, we
found that some changes had taken place in the
condition of geographical knowledge since our visit
in 1905. Someone had reported the existence of
gold on the lower Kantishna and there had been a
small stampede the year before; a town had been
built — it was named Roosevelt, and then it was
discovered that no gold existed, and before winter
the town was deserted, its population was scat-
tered over the continent and complete solitude
again reigned on the banks of the Kantishna from
its source to its confluence with the Tanana.

25

When we arrived at Fairbanks on the Tanana
we heard rumors that someone had ascended the
Kantishna to the lake in a poling boat, but we
could never confirm this rumor. We found
several men who knew the river as far up as
the short-lived town called Roosevelt; above
that point we could get no information about
it except what I had learned from Chief Henry
at the Mission at the mouth of the Tanana in
1905.*

On the nineteenth of June we began to build
our canoe. At Fairbanks there was a store be-
longing to the Northern Commercial Company and
a small sawmill, and these two establishments
made our task much simpler than it would other-
wise have been. Without them we would have
built our canoe, but it would have taken us
longer and perhaps it would not have been quite
so good a job. From the store we procured the

* It has been stated on good authority that Frank Densmore,
a prospector, made his way from the Tanana to the Kuskokwim
in 1889 and returned to the Tanana. In a letter that I have
received from George Otis Smith, the Director of the U. S. Geo-
logical Survey, he states that Densmore's route is not known.
Others have stated that he went up by the Coschaket. In that
case he would most likely have struck what is called the North
Fork of the Kuskokwim somewhere to the north of Lake Minchu-
mina. Whether he saw that lake is not known. From some
accounts it would appear as if it was the South Fork of the Kus-
kokwim (the Istna) that Densmore reached in his journey of which
there is no authentic record.

26

necessary tools, a piece of stout canvas and the
nails. The sawmill reduced our work by cutting
out roughly certain parts of the framework and
the boards, but these had to be shaped and fitted
together, and all of this we did with a pair of
chopping axes, a handsaw, a plane, a hammer,
an auger and a drawknife — all the tools that
are necessary for building a canoe or a brigantine.

On the 26th of June the canoe was launched and
we laid in our supplies. We took flour, oatmeal,
beans, bacon, sugar, condensed milk, dried apples,
salt, baking powder and butter in tins. These
provisions were to last three months with the
expectation of getting game. We had an addi-
tional supply of flour and sugar for trading with
the Indians, and for this purpose we also took
a supply of tobacco, knives and trinkets. We
also carried a moderate supply of ivory soap and
of olein soap and some tallow candles. Our
cooking outfit consisted of a frying pan, a coffee
pot, a tea pot, a stew pan, two plates, two cups,
knives and forks, a sailor's sheath knife and a
gold pan. The last was for mixing flour and for
prospecting. This outfit proved quite adequate
and we never once missed anything we left behind.

Our tent was the type that is used by the Geolog-
ical Survey of Canada. Its entire front forms a

27

flap which can be raised, leaving the tent wide
open. This fly, when let down, can be fastened
by means of lashings at either edge, closing the
tent up tight. It has many advantages. The
fly, when supported at the corners by two light
poles, gives you protection from the rain when
you have work to do that cannot be done inside
of the tent. The fire can be built just clear
of the fly in such a way that you can sit under
the canvas and dry yourself off or do your cooking
in rainy weather.

As a protection against mosquitoes, we made
for ourselves an inner tent of net. In making
camp we always cut poles and pegs and carried
none with us.

An essential feature of our outfit was our
improvised grub-box, a simple affair two feet
long by fourteen inches wide by a foot deep with
a securely fastened cover. In this we always
stored such food, utensils and dishes as we had,
together with tea, coffee and various articles of
food left over from one meal to another. This
simple and indispensable device was in use as
often as we made a meal or prepared a cup of
tea during the entire trip. We had a 6j^ x 8}4
camera with twelve dozen glass plates, a rifle
and a twelve bore shot gun. Each of us carried
28

a dunnage bag for his spare clothing, his towels
and his toilet articles. When we had loaded
everything into the canoe it was well filled in the
middle without crowding the ends which were
reserved for ourselves, one at the stern and the
other at the bow. I forgot to mention a supply
of matches, and also that each of us provided
himself with a match box consisting of a twelve
bore brass shell slipped into a ten bore shell.
This is the best possible box for carrying matches
in the pocket. Our sleeping gear consisted of a
pair of double blankets. The outfit was com-
pleted by a canvas tarpaulin big enough to cover
the cargo of the canoe completely. The box
containing the dry plates was always kept rolled
in a sheet of oiled duck. A bag made of Italian
cloth enabled me to change the plates in the
holders in the daylight. I had brought with me
a specially constructed wooden box to hold the
camera with six plate holders and a supply of
plates. This was very handy for packing and
was also very safe.

On June 26th, at four o'clock, the days being
long, we left Fairbanks and floated down the
Tanana. When night fell we made camp on a
narrow bar close to the wooded bank, and here
we had a lively experience with the terrible

29

scourge of Alaska, the mosquito. We had pro-
vided ourselves with nets suspended from the
brims of our hats. We also wore gloves except
when using the poles. Otherwise it would have
been impossible to endure the continuous assault
of the hungry Alaskan mosquito. They are so
numerous and so aggressive during the brief
summer that I have no doubt whatever that
they are quite capable of killing an unprotected
man in a few hours. With the aid of a smudge
fire under the fly, we endured them while we
cooked and ate our supper. Then we made a
bed of spruce boughs inside the mosquito tent
and, crawling inside, we lay there and smoked
our pipes in perfect comfort. When we were ready
to go to bed, all we had to do was to take off
our outer clothes, put them under our heads,
roll up in our blankets and go to sleep.

Proceeding next day, we camped, near night-
fall, on a high wooded bank in a heavy rain.
It was dark when we had the tent pitched and
the fire going in front of it and we were able to
dry ourselves under the fly, for we were thor-
oughly soaked. With a smudge fire under the
fly, we were able to make fairly successful war
against the mosquitoes, and we cooked our dinner,
washed our dishes, lit our pipes, dried our clothes,

30

kept the fire going with heaps of dead wood we
had gathered, listened to the pouring rain, told
each other yarns, laughed and were supremely
happy. In describing the first camp, I men-
tioned a bed of spruce boughs on which we lay.
At the second camp also we made for ourselves
the same excellent provision and during our
two months' journey at our successive camping
places, so long as the spruce trees stayed with
us, we never once omitted to make ourselves this
bed of the fresh fragrant boughs. It made no
difference how weary we were or whether we
camped in the dark under a pouring rain or in
fair weather; cutting the boughs and laying them
carefully to form a double pallet was a part of
the discipline of making camp. It was a good
measure, for it always insured a good night's
rest and a refreshing sleep. When we left the
spruce timber behind and came to the willows,
we made our bed of willows. The spruce, how-
ever, is best, and indeed I do not know a better
bed for a tired and sleepy man.

Next day, having some work to do, we broke
camp late and did not get started till noon.
Towards five o'clock a thunder storm came up
and we made camp on a sand-bar. This was
one of the only two occasions on which we

3i

heard thunder during the entire summer in
Alaska.

The bars in the Alaskan rivers make very-
attractive camping places, especially when they
run well out from the bank. They are below
water when the rivers are high, emerging as
the water falls in summer. They are formed
of clean, well washed sand, deposited in slack
water by the floods and they thus afford firm
ground without obstruction. They also afford
abundance of firewood, for they are invariably
strewn with dry splinters of the spruce and birch
timbers that line the banks. The trees of every
size are cut down, shattered and stripped of
bark and branches or split up into a thousand
pieces by the ice when the spring freshets set
it free and carry it, piled high between the banks,
irresistibly down stream. The fragments of
trees have a tendency to get caught on the sand-
bars or to lodge on them as the floods recede,
leaving on each bar an excellent supply of fuel
where there is no one to use it.

These bars have another advantage as camp-
ing ground, because they are exposed to the
breezes and are less apt to be infested with mos-
quitoes than the sheltered banks with their thick
timber.

32

The bar on which we were camped was a good
example and an ideal camping place in fair weather.
The thunder shower was quickly over and though
several hours of the afternoon still remained
we decided to stay in camp and enjoy ourselves.
We had now escaped the world of men and were
far enough away already to be entirely free from
care of any kind. The temperature was about
the same as a coolish day in May in the south
of England or in New Jersey. A fresh breeze
was blowing up stream and our camping place
was free from mosquitoes. We were, therefore,
able to strip and take a plunge in the river. At
many of the camping places it would have been
impossible to expose our skins without the most
painful and even dangerous consequences from
the myriad stings of the mosquitoes.

The water was icy cold, but we were already
used to that and our spirits grew more buoyant.
The supper that we made that evening was one
in which we availed ourselves of the utmost
resources of our supplies and of the art of cooking
as we understood it, and one of us was master
of this art as he was a master of camp life in all
its details and as he was a master of the art of
life generally in all of its relations. At first we
agreed to take turns cooking and I had thoughts

33

of becoming an accomplished cook. Gradually,
however, by mutual consent, MacLaren took
these duties over entirely, much to the general
advantage, and I performed all the other work
of the camp, including washing up the dishes.

To return to our third camp, we made our-
selves so comfortable and so much at home in
a few hours on that sand-bar in the Tanana that
we felt as if we could spend the rest of our natural
lives there with entire contentment.

That night was a wonderful starlit night, cool
enough to make us draw close to the genial glow
of the fire. Its cheerful crackling mingled with
the murmurs of the river and there was no other
sound. We were already rested, and after every-
thing had been made snug we sat by the camp
fire long into the night.

34

CHAPTER II
The Lower Kantishna

We were up at the break of day, but made our
preparations leisurely and it was nine o'clock before
we started; we paddled with a moderate cur-
rent for four hours and stopped an hour for lunch.
We passed later the little Indian village of
Tolovana, where the natives had already ceased
to be of much interest, and a little later we
reached the mouth of the Kantishna. This
stream joins the Tanana in a swift flood about
forty yards in width divided by an island which
splits the current and forms a fork. Our paddles
were of no use now. To meet the opposing cur-
rent of the Kantishna, which we were to ascend,
we must resort to the poles. There were plenty
of slender spruce trees on the bank, some of them
so withered and dry that we had no difficulty
in finding two that were suitable for poles. With
these we were able to push the canoe against
the swift current, and at 8.30 we pulled up against
a sandy bar on the island that at that point
divided the stream, and there made camp.

Here, in spite of a stiff breeze, the mosquitoes

35

were very bad and assailed us in clouds. On the
following day we stayed in camp, making a better
selection of poles, smoothing them down and
fitting them with iron spikes and rings at the
bottom. These irons we brought with us and
fortunately so, for we found before many days
that the poles in many stretches of swift water
and hard bottom would not have taken hold
without the iron bits. The poles were sixteen
feet in length and this length proved almost too
short in deep water.

At this camp we had a strange and pathetic
visitor. A lost dog came out of the woods, swam
the left fork of the stream and made the appeal
for the friendship and the protection of man
that only a dog can make. He was, I think,
a dog that had never known much kindness,
for he crawled across the sand-bar, slowly drag-
ging himself on the ground, in the most abject
attitude that even a dog in the last extremity
of his need can assume. How he came to be
there I cannot say, but we suspected that one
of the small flat-bottomed steamers that ply
up and down the Tanana as far as Fairbanks
had stopped, not far away, perhaps weeks before,
to get wood, and having gone ashore, the dog
was left behind. He was evidently half starved

36

and in a desperate state. He, at any rate, had
not felt the call of the wild, or if he had, he soon
tired of it, for a more sorry and a more melancholy
animal, we both agreed, had never been seen.
When we spoke to him he rose to his feet and
there was a look in his eyes that I have never
forgotten. It had in it the whole story of the
relation of the dog to man. It was the appeal
from the past, the silent servitude, the tried
friendship, and the claim for protection of fifty
thousand years. It was the opening up of a
weird vista running back to the savage dawn
of man filled with vague memories of companion-
ship and devotion. No lost human soul in its
utter extremity could make an appeal one-half
so profound.

When he had been fed he lay down in front
of the tent and never once took his eye off us.
From that time on he tried to show in every way
that the one object of his life was to give such
service as a dog can give in return for human
companionship — his supreme need.

It was at this camp that we had our one accident
of the journey. The fly of the tent being up,
a gust of wind blew a spark into the mosquito
netting which immediately took fire. Mac was
upon it in an instant, but before he succeeded

37

in smothering it, it presented a seriously damaged
appearance. If he had been a moment later,
it would have been too late. As it was, we were
able to repair the damage. The loss of the
mosquito net may seem a relatively small matter.
As a matter of fact, it would have been a most
serious disaster, for it would have been impos-
sible to sleep without the protection that it
afforded. Fortunately, the fire was caught in
time and it was a little thing. My only reason
for mentioning it is to illustrate how slight a
thing might have ruined our trip, and also to
bring out the fact that apart from this, not a
single untoward incident occurred during the
canoe trip across Alaska to the shores of Bering
Sea.

At one o'clock we were ready to proceed again
and we started up against the current, making
good headway by means of the poles. The cur-
rent at this part of the Kantishna is about 3^
miles an hour. Now, poling a twenty foot canoe
carrying half a ton besides our own weight,
against a shifting current, even in good water
presents difficulties and requires both strength
and skill combined with judgment, especially
for the man in the stern who must watch the
water constantly and guide the movements of

38

the canoe according to the movements of the
water. The man at the bow has his own diffi-
culties, for, watch the water as he may, he cannot
see the shifting current in relation to the course
of the canoe so well as the man at the stern whose
movements also he is unable to see. Conse-
quently it may often happen that he exerts his
strength in a direction opposite to that intended
by the man at the stern, who is already having
his troubles in holding her true.

It is different with the long poling boat with
spoon bow and shallow bottom such as is used
by prospectors in Alaska. Its great length gives
the man standing in the projecting stern a much
greater control in steering; its draught is less
and its lines make it less susceptible to the push
of the current.

My own earlier experience in poling was negli-
gible. MacLaren, who had more experience,
usually took the stern, especially when there was
swift water requiring extra skill and judgment to
negotiate.

The river attained in places a width of more
than one hundred yards. Its banks were lined
with a thick growth of spruce and birch trees
of small or medium size with no very large timber.
The largest trees were perhaps fourteen inches

39

in diameter. Projecting sand-bars were numer-
ous, affording good camping ground. We always
stopped on one of these sand-bars about mid-
day for an hour to prepare and eat lunch and
again for a few minutes in the afternoon to make
tea. Working eight to ten hours a day against
a strong current soon hardened us and put us
in a fit condition for anything we might meet.
On account of the wooded banks we could do no
tracking except for certain stretches where pebbly
beaches or shallow water lay close to the bank.
When the conditions suggested our taking advan-
tage of these intervals we took to the line and
sometimes waded knee deep or waist deep in
the icy water, which by this time involved no
hardship, for we were completely hardened to it.
In fact, our clothes were seldom dry, for the
drip from the poles, as we swung them up from
the deep water, kept us wet. It made no differ-
ence, for we were content either way. Besides,
rains were frequent and often at night we had
to remove everything from the canoe to bail the
rain-water.

We were now in a country that had every
appearance of game country and we were con-
stantly on the lookout. Moose tracks were very
frequent on the bars and it was evident that the

40

animals had been to the river to drink within
the week. There were, however, no absolutely-
fresh tracks. Bear tracks were common enough
too, but though we kept a sharp watch we saw
no game at all except once when we saw a moose
swimming the river a long way ahead. I sighted
for 400 yards and fired from the bow, but there
was a stiff breeze and the canoe was bobbing on
the waves and my aim was bad. I fired as the
moose topped the steep bank; he slipped back
a few paces, recovered himself and disappeared
in the timber. When we arrived at the place,
we found a few drops of blood on the bushes
at the top of the bank, but we were unable to
follow it any further and soon gave up the useless
search. We had expected to find game before
this, and to account for its absence we concluded
that the moose and caribou had all gone back
to the hills to avoid the flies, for, besides the
mosquito, there was another most obnoxious
fly nearly as big as a wasp with a yellow body
and a painful bite. We were now without fresh
meat for two weeks. Our fare consisted of beans
boiled with a few slices of bacon, scones baked
in the frying pan, and coffee, with some dried
apples for dessert. This was our dinner. For
breakfast we had rolled oats with sugar and

4i

milk, fried bacon, scones and coffee. The scones
were fresh-baked every day at dinner in quantity
sufficient to last till lunch on the following day.
For lunch we had boiled beans, scones and coffee.
A pot of beans lasted us about three days; warmed
over each time, they never lost their flavor and
they always tasted delicious. Indeed, I know
of no better substitute for fresh meat when one
is doing hard work and undergoing fatigue in
the open air.

I am now reminded of our friend, the dog.
He had accompanied us from day to day, making
his way along the bank, no very difficult matter,
for our progress hardly averaged more than a
mile and a half an hour. His difficulty arose
from our having frequently to make a traverse,
that is to say we had to cross the stream to take
advantage of the slack water as the main current
swung from one side to the other. In these
crossings we usually lost a short distance by
being carried down by the current, but these
losses were a necessary part of our progress up
the river. This was a lesson that the dog never
learned, for, instead of remaining on the same
side and making his independent way at his ease,
he was so afraid of losing us that each time we
headed for the opposite bank he swam across
42

also and was carried much farther down the
stream than we were. This was fatiguing work
for him; because sometimes he would hardly
have overtaken us when a sudden shift of the
water would force us to cross again. We could
hardly have taken him in the canoe, filled as it
was above the gunwales. To attempt it would
have increased our difficulties and we had little
doubt that the dog's experience would soon teach
him to keep to one side of the river and spare
himself the fatigue of swimming. He kept with
us for five days. We fed him the little that we
could spare and were always hoping to get game.
He must have been very hungry, but though
there were opportunities for him to steal, he
never stole. At night he always lay down beside
the canoe and placed himself on watch, intimating
very plainly that he understood his job and only
hoped that we were satisfied and found him
useful. To be sure, there was nothing to protect
the outfit from during the night, since we never
saw either man or beast. But that made no
difference. On the sixth day from the mouth
of the Kantishna, however, the water was bad,
very swift and shifting, forcing us to make many
traverses. Sometime during that day, we being
very much occupied with the work in hand,

43

the dog disappeared. We thought he would
turn up when we were making camp at night,
but we never saw him again. It seemed likely
that he became exhausted by his constantly
repeated crossings and re-crossing and, being
caught in a swift current or a whirlpool, was
drowned. We felt sorry, not because we needed
him, but because a dog will attach himself to a
man, that being his nature.

On the sixth of June, at 8.30, we camped in a
small open space in the thick spruce timber near
the mouth of a creek. Here the mosquitoes
were unusually bad, but we were able to reduce
the plague considerably by a circle of smudge
fires. The days were rapidly getting longer,
so that camping as late as half after eight, we
still had plenty of daylight to set up the tent,
cook our supper, wash up and make everything
snug and comfortable before turning in.

We now decided to spend a day in this camp
and have a try for game. In the morning we
took the empty canoe and paddled several miles
up the creek and saw only a few ducks with
their flocks of young but a few days out of the
eggs. The boldness and persistence of the mother
birds in feigning a broken wing and endeavoring
to lead us in pursuit away from the young, who

44

/

- -'*u^^^^imiii^^mm. 'mimttfffi**

■• ■'■•■■ .XCm1*

DENALI FROM THE NORTH. AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR
FROM A POINT JUST BELOW THE FORK

were thoroughly instructed to keep still and make
no demonstration whatever, were more marked
than I have ever seen. In each case the mother
bird, long after we had passed the place where
we saw the little flock huddled together under
the bank, swam and fluttered in front of the
canoe, giving a very accurate imitation of a
wounded bird in distress endeavoring to keep
away from the hunter. Having acted in this
way until, according to her calculations, we had
been lured far enough away from the little flock,
she suddenly took wing to disappear over the
trees, returning unseen to her ducklings. Instinct
often seems to be more certain and unerring
than reason, and one cannot but wonder how
the latter faculty came to supplant the former
in the course of evolution. Moreover, in the
woods, one is constantly made aware that the
resources of the one do not differ in kind from
the resources of the other, and that the wild
creatures of the woods employ the same expedients
and have recourse to the same methods as
diplomats.

45

CHAPTER III
A Deserted Town

We returned from the creek about midday
and spent the afternoon on a tramp through the
forest hunting for signs of game. We saw plenty
tracks of moose and bear, but we returned late
without having seen any other sign of their pres-
ence. It was evident that all the big game had
abandoned the vicinity of the river quite recently
for the higher grounds many miles away. We
decided that we would not go in pursuit, but
trusted in the likelihood that on the upper reaches
of the river we would find game, for the higher
we ascended the more we found ourselves in what
had all the appearance of good game country.

On the ioth of July we passed the mouth of
a good sized stream coming in on our left. This
stream we had learned was known to prospectors
as the Bear Paw.

At about this time I began to experience a
certain discomfort for which I was heartily
ashamed. We were often in the water dragging
the canoe over swift shallows and I had discarded
my moccasins and indulged myself by going

46

SCENE ON THE UPPER KANTISHNA

SCENE ON THE UPPER KANTISHNA

barefoot in spite of mosquitoes and flies and sun,
which, though not hot, had sufficient power to
inflict a burn. Alternately exposed to the sun's
rays and the ice cold water, there set up a pecu-
liarly painful sort of inflammation on my left
instep. Probably it was aggravated by the
poison of fly bites or mosquito bites; at any
rate, it soon became so bad that I could not
endure the contact of a moccasin and the pain
became very severe. It was especially annoy-
ing, because I knew it was the result of careless-
ness and ineptitude. I knew too that Mac knew
this also, though he would not have me think so.

On July 1 2th my foot was so bad that my
brother proposed that we stop to take care of it.
His tenderness and concern for me were more than
I deserved, seeing that my trouble was brought
on by my own stupidity. He made me keep
quiet and by his constant good humor and admir-
able spirits, he soon made me forget all my
mental discomfort.

Next day I was so much better that we started
out at nine and during that day and the next
we made very good progress. On the morning of
the 15 th, however, my foot began to trouble me
again and we rested in consequence till 3.15?
when we decided to go on and look for a better

47

camping place. We had gone only an hour and
three-quarters when we came suddenly and unex-
pectedly to the deserted town of Roosevelt. In
the meantime it had begun to rain. The town
was on the left bank. It consisted of about a
dozen log cabins strung along the bank where
the timber had been cleared away. They looked
as if they had been just built and one of them,
the largest and the only two storied structure,
was evidently the hotel. Everything was in good
order and all that Roosevelt lacked to be a great
city was a population.

We examined several of the cabins and finally
decided to put up at the hotel.

The door of our hotel was nailed up and we
wondered whether we would be committing lar-
ceny if we broke it open. We agreed to take
chances, for the rain was becoming very heavy.
We pried open the door and found a perfectly
clean and absolutely dry interior. The floor was
of rough planks and there was a new and per-
fectly good kitchen range installed ready for use.
Evidently it had been used but little. We soon
had the canoe drawn up and made fast directly
in front of the building and had transferred our
provisions and blankets and whatever we needed.
We built a roaring fire in the range, dried our
48

clothes and made ourselves as comfortable as if
we never meant to leave the place again. The
house was empty except for the range and we
made good use of this, not only for making our-
selves warm and dry but for cooking as well.
We now had fresh biscuits in place of scones, and
though our appetites never grew tired of the
last, the biscuits (and they were good ones) were
a joy to us, and in order that our sudden and
unexpected return to hotel life should not be
wanting in luxury, we devised a number of entirely
new and fanciful dishes of which our appetites
highly approved.

When we were ready to turn in that first night
in the town of Roosevelt, we carried our blankets
and mosquito net to the second floor and slept
on the boards. It was the first time we were
without a bed of spruce boughs, but we were so
hardened by this time and slept so easily and
soundly that the hardness of the boards was not
noticed.

Some time in the night I was awakened by
my brother, who poked me in the ribs and said he
heard voices. Soon we were both wide awake and
we heard the rain on the roof and we distinctly
heard the voices of men outside. What could it
mean ? Certainly we were not expecting visitors.

49

We were sixteen days without seeing human
beings and it had been growing more and more
clear to us that we were getting farther each day
from human society. Having gone to sleep with
a sense of complete isolation and security, to
wake up in the darkness, hearing human voices
outside the door, was an unwelcome experience.

We had taken the precaution of fastening the
door on the inside, but we knew that it could be
easily forced; therefore when we heard the men
(we did not know whether there were two or
twenty or whether they were Indians or white
men) begin to pry open the door we realized
that the situation had to be faced no matter how
it might develop.

MacLaren, always prompt of action and a
stranger to fear, struck a match, lit the candle
and was on his way down the creaking stairs
almost before I realized what he was about. I
followed, picking up the rifle as I went. By the
time I overtook him he was already opening the
door and at once two men dripping wet came in
out of the night. Their look of unfeigned sur-
prise and their sincere English expletives at once
extinguished the feelings of uneasiness of which I
now felt rather ashamed.

They had come on foot two days' journey

SO

through the woods from a claim or a prospect
that they had on a creek. They had run short
of provisions and had come to look for a sack
of flour which they had heard had been left in
one of the abandoned cabins. Feeling their way
through the woods along an abandoned trail,
they had lost their way and came upon our lodg-
ings by chance in the darkness. They were good
examples of the men who roam the wilds and
keep beyond the farthest outpost of civilization.
Alaska at that time attracted all kinds — some of
the very worst and some of the very best. The
prospector is a type by himself; you found him
sometimes alone, but usually in pairs on lonely
rivers, sometimes inquiring what month it might
be, but almost never asking for news of the
forgotten world.

We were soon on the most friendly terms with
our visitors. They were men of good information
and engaging manner, with the stamp of the
wilds strong upon them. Men who lead that
life either end by "shaking hands with the wil-
lows," which means going mad, or else they
become very quiet and very human. They do
not grow into wild men. That kind grows only
in towns and cities, big and small.

It was obvious to us at once that these men

5i

from the night and the storm and the wilds were
our guests. They apologized for their intrusion.
They were desperately hungry as well as wet.
We soon had the fire going and we had it from
their own lips, and I think from their hearts,
that they were glad of our hospitality. It was
rough to be sure, but we did our best and we liked
the men for their quiet but sincere and hearty
manner.

On the next day they found the sack of flour
hidden in a corner of one of the cabins, and, I
think partly to avoid imposing themselves on us,
they said good-bye and left us to return the way
they came, though the rain continued to fall.

I now suffered more than ever from my left
foot. The skin had broken on the middle of
the instep, there was much inflammation and
any muscular action caused great pain. On this
account, as well as on account of the rain, we
decided to stay comfortably where we were till
I got relief and the weather improved. For two
days the rain continued and for two days I made
rapid progress. On the third day the sun came
out, and on that day I could wear my moccasin
and walk without serious discomfort. Mac was
for waiting till the foot was completely healed,
but this time I had my way. I was sorry for

52

it later, for I soon found that I was little, if any,
help in poling. Worst of all, we soon struck very
swift water and Mac had to do most of the work
himself. It was hard work too, but for five hours
he swung his pole to such purpose that with but
small help from me he had put many miles of
swift and broken water between us and Roose-
velt.

As we swung round a bend about four o'clock
we opened up before us, under a perfectly clear
sky, a distant sky line where the river divided
the timber in a stretch of several miles. The
view which then greeted us was extraordinary
and startling. Right in front of us rose a moun-
tain, broad at the base and culminating in a
steep and jagged peak high up in the heavens.
From its broad base to its summit it stood glis-
tening white against the blue, huge and amazing.
We judged it to be fifty miles away. It may
have been more. We had already caught a
glimpse of Denali, the great mountain, half buried
in clouds, and now for the first time we saw it
naked and splendid. Surely not without reason
did the Indian call this mighty mass Denali,
which means The Most High. Standing four
miles above the level earth, it is a sight worth
going a long way to see. We camped at four

53

o'clock on a beautiful sand-bar with that awe-
inspiring scene keeping its spell upon us as long
as the daylight lasted. And the sun set and
night settled down over the valley and still Denali's
top blazed out above the darkness like a beacon
in the sky. Even after it had faded into the
night we could hear from time to time a rushing,
roaring sound like a distant wind. It was the
noise of the avalanches; or was it the laughter
of the gods ?

In the morning we had left Roosevelt silent
and forsaken on the river bank, dreaming of an
Alaskan summer day and of creeks with beds of
gold. In towering Majesty that loomed above,
he saw that which was no dream but an awful
presence whose voice he heard in the stillness.
It was McKinley.* Serene, remote and robed
in spotless purity, the Northern Lights were the
curtains of his tent and the midnight sun kept
watch before his door. It was thus that the
great mountain looked down on the little aban-
doned town, and as we thought of these things
we recalled the words of Elihu, the son of Barachel
the Buzite, what time his wrath was kindled:
"Behold, in this thou art not just. I will answer

* The name by which Denali (pronounced De-na'-li) is called
on U. S. Government maps.

54

thee that God is greater than man. Look unto
the heavens and see, and behold the clouds that
are higher than man."

Looking back on these scenes today I see in
the names that thrust themselves into the eternal
scheme of things, merely an example of the in-
justice and lack of proportion as well as want of
propriety that seems to pursue the work of the
pioneer in America. There is no evident con-
nection between the name of ex-President Roose-
velt and the ghost of whimsical human error
that stalks through an abandoned mining town.
Neither is there any obvious sense of fitness to
reconcile one to the association of ex-President
McKinley with a natural feature of the Alaskan
landscape. These names owe their presence on
the map to no fault of the public men with whom
such liberties have been taken, but to a practice
on the part of pioneers or of map makers that
ignores both justice and propriety, and that
derives its only authority from contemporary
politics, mistaken sentiment or false patriotism.
There are many people who prefer the practice
that has given us such names as Manitoba, Mis-
sissippi, Oregon, Tacoma, Popocatepetl and
Chimborazo. For their sake I am going to
persist in using the name DENALI like the

55

savages who have some priority in the matter
and who have their own fancy for names.

The builders of the man-made town have an
unquestioned right to call it what they will, but
the mountains are not man-made, and having
seen this masterpiece of His handiwork, I have
not the will to remove therefrom the name of
The Most High. If the soul of the savage,
through the ages, aspired to God in the presence
of this sign of His power, to what did the white
man's soul aspire when he approached it from
afar?*

I fear that when we stand, as we must do,
before a future generation of men appointed to
judge us and our works, it will surely be found
that we in our unchastened years of guilt and
shame, being full of vainglory, forgot among
many counsels the scornful cry of the creator
according to the Hebrew poet: "Where wast

* The first explorer to mention the big mountain was the great
navigator, Vancouver, who saw it in 1794 from that arm of the
sea which he called Cook's Inlet. Vancouver records his impres-
sion of the view which a hundred miles away was to his experienced
eye "stupendous."

The Russians must have had the same view, for though it is
not mentioned in any of their writings, they had a name for the
mountain derived from the natives of Cook's Inlet. In 1878
Harper and Mayo, famous in the pioneer annals of the Yukon,
ascended the Tanana. In a letter that has been preserved, Harper
mentions having seen from that river "a great ice mountain to
the south."

56

thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
declare if thou hast understanding. Whereupon
are its foundations fixed and who laid the corner-
stone thereof when the morning stars sang together
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

On the 19th of June, so rapidly did my injury
heal in the pure, uninfected air, that I was free
from all discomfort and able to do my share of
the hard work in the swift water. The day was
again bright and with scarcely a cloud in the
sky; we lingered in camp and it was 11.45 before
we took up our poles and headed toward the
great mountain. The water was still swift and
for two and three-quarters hours we had as hard
work as at any time since we entered the Kan-
tishna. At that time we reached the fork with-
out expecting it. The left fork proved to be very
swift and muddy and filled with the silt that is
fed into it from the glaciers on the flanks of the
great mountain. We pushed into the right fork,
for our road lay in that direction, and found that
the water was quite slack and much more clear
than any we had seen. We found now that we
could change from poles to paddles, which was
a very great relief. It was twenty days since
we had cut our poles and during sixteen of these
days we had poled our way up stream, only on

57

rare occasions varying the work by use of the
line. To swing a stout sixteen foot pole for ten
hours a day and keep headway on a canoe with
a considerable draught, against a current that
varies from two miles to five miles an hour is
exercise which I can recommend for any one who
wants to get in good condition in a short time.

The whole aspect of the country was now
changed. The spruce timber disappeared and
gave way to a thick growth of willow and alder
with occasional small birch. Also the banks
were of clay and low with numerous ponds on
either side. There were no longer any sand-bars
and good camping places were hard to find.

On the 20th of July we passed the mouth of a
clear stream on the left with a deserted Indian
cabin on the bank. This stream we afterwards
learned is called by the Indians Nutchitalichakat.
After this the water grew more slack, the banks
more muddy and the country more swampy.
We missed the firm sand and the hard dry ground
under the spruce trees that afforded such good
camping places on the lower Kantishna. Often
in stepping ashore on what was apparently a
grassy bank we found oozy mud, and this was a
condition we had to get used to and make the
most of. In places there was long grass grow-

58

ing in the mud. By covering the growth with
willow twigs we were able to make ourselves
comfortable in our tent. Dry firewood became
scarce, but we always managed to gather enough.

However, there were compensations and they
were by no means small ones. The water grew
more slack and paddling became easier. Then
the numerous ponds proved to be the haunts of
ducks and we were in sight of flocks most of
the time. The young were now grown. It was
on the 2 1 st of July that we saw the first of these
flocks and shot three mallard and a widgeon.
(Naturally we did not shoot the birds with young
that we saw on the 7th.) I soon became ac-
quainted with and learned to distinguish almost
every variety of duck that is known on the
American continent. The most common were
mallard, canvas back, teal and widgeon. It was
one of my brother's many accomplishments that
he knew everything in fur and feather from
Mexico to the Arctic. He knew their habits
and he knew them in all their varieties. Conse-
quently I learned many things in those three
months that I have forgotten since.

The days had now grown so long that there
was scarcely an hour of darkness. The sun was
still above the horizon at ten o'clock p. m. On

59

the 2 1 st, the day that we shot our first game, we
stopped for two hours to prepare one of them
and to enjoy the first meal of meat in twenty-
three days. The ducks were fat and in fine con-
dition, and being cooked in a frying pan, the
readiest way of preparing them, I am sure nothing
ever tasted so good to anyone. We were now in
the pink of condition, as hard as flesh and sinew
could be made and in perfect health. On that
day we kept on paddling until after midnight
and then we found that the night had vanished
and the darkness was blended with the day.
There was a long twilight which grew till mid-
night and then it began to lighten again. On
the following day we started at 2 p. m. and it
was again midnight before we camped. We were
several hours searching for a suitable camping
place and were finally compelled to pitch our
tent in the mud and make the best of it.

Altogether we were taking it very easy and
enjoying the good fare, the fine weather and
the easy going. The river at this part is extremely
crooked. It is always turning and doubling back
upon itself and reversing its direction for miles.
At times it spreads out over the flat country or
divides and breaks up into many sloughs, often
very bewildering. If you happen to take a wrong
60

*5ja

1

S ^ 1 si

1

'I l

i

.

'

1 ;

>

!

i

»

turn you may be led many miles away from the
main stream without knowing it.

For several days we felt that the lake must be
at hand, and at every turn we expected to see it
spread before us. A certain streakiness in the
water puzzled us. At places it presented a dark
appearance and in close proximity another streak
presented a lighter color due apparently to finely
divided particles of rock that it carried in sus-
pension. This we recognized as glacial silt and
we therefore concluded that there must be a
glacial stream coming into the Kantishna between
us and the outlet of the lake, the lake itself
supplying the clear dark water. After paddling
for two days more through a flat and dreary
country, without reaching the lake, we began
to doubt the accuracy of our deductions, and my
brother asked me if I thought we could have got
on the Amazon by mistake.

On these wonderful days of sheer delight we
never left camp till after we had lunch. We
stopped always later in the day to make tea and
camped about midnight. On July 24th we broke
camp at 3.15. Shortly afterwards we shot our first
goose and at seven o'clock, after we had decided
to forget about the lake, our immediate goal, we
turned a sharp bend and there it lay spread out

61

in front of us. Just at its outlet a swift stream
comes in from the south from the direction of
Mount Denali, heavily charged with silt from
the glaciers. We afterwards learned that this
stream is called by the Indians Kwalana. When
we had passed this tributary and entered the lake
we found the water perfectly clear, and we had
soon selected a good camping place on the shore
not far from the outlet. The shore at this point
was hard and pebbly and covered with a thick
growth of willows and alder and small birch.
We saw a promontory with a high bluff to the
southwest across the lake and fixed upon this
as a lookout from which to take our observations.
The next morning being clear and with only
light winds we crossed to this promontory in
about an hour, passed round its extremity and,
turning to the south, drew our canoe up under
a high bluff with a sandy beach at its base.
The promontory terminates in a spit ending in
a long sand bar that runs straight out under water
and forms a shoal. It is well, therefore, for any-
one crossing the lake to give this point a wide
berth.

62

DENALI AS SEEN FROM OUR CAMP AT LAKE MINCHUMINA.
AFTER A SKETCH BY THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER IV
The Kingdom of Denali

We climbed the bluff and followed the wooded
ridge southward until it began to fall away.
Returning to a high point which we had marked,
where the wood was sufficiently open to give a
good outlook, we searched with the glass the
horizon and the border of the lake in every
direction. In the north the country was flat
and wooded. Around the southern shore there
stretched a narrow belt of the same low lying
scrub timber; behind that belt, the land rose
and showed bare of timber. Still farther back
the higher hills were covered with snow; back
of that rose the Alaskan range and, lifted over
all, the loom of Denali, shimmering white, lit
up the Southern sky. From this point of obser-
vation the mountain shows a double peak. We
judged it to be about fifty miles away, but so
great is its height and mass that it seemed much
nearer. On so vast a scale are its scarps and
ramps that they were clearly revealed even at
that distance. We agreed that we had never
seen anything so overpowering in its solitary

63

grandeur. Near it, towards the west, stands
another peak not so high or so grand, which, as
we were soon to learn, the Indians call Sultana
and also Menlale.

This was the panorama that presented itself
from our point of observation; not a living thing
was in sight, not a sign of an Indian habitation,
not a sound, not a trace of human occupation.
We were alone in the heart of a vast and unbroken
wilderness where, so far as we could see, the foot
of man had left no trace. Yet somewhere on
that lake we expected to find Indians, so we con-
tinued to search the shores with the glass. The
lake seemed to be about twelve miles across at
its greatest width, and there were plenty of little
bays where a village might be hidden. We had
about concluded to start out on a complete cir-
cumnavigation of the lake when MacLaren
declared that he saw smoke and handed me
the glass. Across the lake at the right, a very
slender wisp of smoke hung against the spruce.
It was enough: we descended to where the canoe
was beached, lit our fire, cooked our midday meal,
took plenty of time to digest it comfortably and
started out in the direction whence we had marked
the smoke, now vanished.

Arriving at the opposite side we rounded a

64

long narrow point of low land covered with trees
and saw an encampment consisting of three brush
tents, the summer camp of a band of Indians.
We landed and were met by two men and seven
dogs, the latter so savage and threatening that
the men had to beat them down. In the tents
were three women and two children. In panto-
mime we explained to the men that we had come
to visit them, pointing out the way we had
traveled. By similar pantomime they told us
a story by which we understood them to mean
that they had both made a journey several years
before down the Kantishna to the Mission at
Tanana. They had apparently remained there
long enough to be baptised, for one explained
that he was called Luke and the other that he
was called John. At least that is the way it
sounded to us and I think that we understood
correctly. They had brought with them some
cloth, some empty tins and an empty bottle, all
of which they exhibited to us with pride as the
evidence of their adoption of the white man's
civilization. Each had also a complete suit of
white man's clothes including the braces. That
was not the only evidence of their conversion,
for we had not been long with them when they
asked us for "hooch," meaning strong drink,

65

and seemed greatly disappointed to find that we
had none. We made them presents of tobacco
and a few trinkets and left them to establish
ourselves on a good camping place which we had
passed at the end of the point of land. Before
leaving, however, we were treated to a surprise.
There was something the Indians were anxious
to tell us, for they kept repeating certain signs
with great earnestness as though they wished to
communicate some information of importance.
The only English word they knew was "man"
and after a long struggle we made out that they
were telling us that two white men had passed
ten days before, coming the same way as we
had come and had passed on towards the north
in a direction which we felt to correspond to
the route we were to travel.

These men, it seemed, had come in a large
poling boat filled with many sacks and boxes,
clearly a pair of prospectors. We then made
diligent inquiries as to whether other white men
had ever passed this way. They gave us to
understand then and afterwards, as we saw them
day by day, that the only white men who had
passed previously was a party of six who had
come from the southwest and passed to the north
with dog sleds in the winter some years before.
66

This clearly referred to Lieutenant Herron's
party.

We made a snug camp on the sand-bar at the
end of the point and decided to remain a few
days to rest and enjoy ourselves and learn all
we could from the Indians and trade with them.
On the following day the two men came in their
light birchbark canoe and brought us presents of
moose meat and white fish, the latter fresh caught
in the lake.

Our first effort was to learn the geography of
the country, and we had no difficulty whatever
in making this wish known. First on the sand
and afterwards on a piece of birchbark, the natives
drew a complete map of the lake with the streams
that enter and leave it, and, most important for
us, they were able to show where the head of the
great Kuskokwim lay, how it was to be reached
from the lake, and the exact position of the
portage. This portage had remained an unknown
quantity in our minds; we had expected it to
be long and it might be high or it might be low.
On this point Chief Henry had not been very
explicit in 1905, though from his statement about
it we judged it to be about twenty miles in length.
All we knew positively was that there must be
a divide between Lake Minchumina and the

67

Kuskokwim, a divide which separates the two
greatest river systems of Northern Alaska, and
we assumed for this reason that it must be a
considerable barrier. We were naturally anxious
to know how long it would take us to cross this
divide. On the map drawn by the aid of the
Indians it looked as if it might be a reasonable
day's journey for a man traveling with a light
pack, and from our own observations we had
already seen that there could be no very high
ground. When we questioned the Indians more
particularly, however, they explained that it was
a five days' journey for a man traveling light.
This was rather more than we had hoped for.
The Indians may have had their own reasons for
exaggerating the distance, for we afterwards had
the comfort of discovering that in this particular
information they were unmerciful liars — were
Luke and John. Ten days later when we had
demonstrated this fact by crossing the portage
ourselves, we found some diversion in trying to
find the motive that was back of this falsehood.
We finally decided that they meant it as a
reminder that they had at least mastered the
rudiments of civilization and had not failed to
profit by their brief sojourn among people of our
race. At first we were inclined to trust them,
68

for experience had long convinced us both that
untutored Indians are particularly trustworthy.

I must here explain that the winter camp of
the band to which these two men and three
women belonged, lay to the southwest side of
the lake. All the rest of the band were far away
hunting near the mountains. The men who
remained were undoubtedly lazy and worthless
fellows, otherwise they would have been with
the hunters who, with their women, were at
that time camped on the hunting ground gather-
ing and preparing meat and skins for their winter
food and clothing.

One of the things that we learned was that
the Indians who live on Lake Minchumina, on the
Kantishna and on the Tichininik (North Fork of
the Kuskokwim) call themselves " Minkhotana "
(meaning Lake People). I could form only a
rough idea of their numbers, but one of the
statements in which our informants always per-
sisted was that the Minkhotana had formerly
been a large tribe with many villages on the lake,
on the Tichininik, on the Kwalana and on other
streams over towards the mountains. The people
living on the lower Kuskokwim, i. e., the Eskimo,
they called Totzatla Retu.

The arts and industries of the Minkhotana

69

Indians, like those of the Tenan-Kutchin and
tribes in other interior parts of Alaska, are con-
fined almost entirely to the manufacture of cloth-
ing and household utensils.

The clothing is made of the skins of animals
and especially of the moose. The most important
industry, that of dressing the skins, is carried on
almost entirely by the women. The inner side
of the skin is first scraped to remove adhering
pieces of flesh. After this, the hair is removed
by scraping. The brain of the animal is boiled
and reduced to a paste and this paste is applied
over the entire inner surface of the skin on
account of the softening effect. The skin is
scalded and is then wrung and stripped of the
water and when dry is softened by rubbing.
The final operation in this process consists of
6moking the skin. A small tent is built of poles
stuck in the ground covered with pieces of skin
or with brush. Inside this tent the skin to be
treated is suspended over a pile of decayed wood.
This decayed wood is ignited and the tent closed
up tight.

For winter clothing the skins of fur bearing
animals are dressed with the fur left on.

The effect of the smoking on the skin is to
give it a rich brown color which seems to be its
70

only purpose. This part of the process is done,
therefore, for purely aesthetic reasons. Besides
the brown color, the smoking of the skin imparts
to it a peculiar and highly characteristic odor,
which, to one who becomes accustomed to it, is
both pleasant and distinctive. One whiff of that
smoky smell after years of city life brings back
with great vividness all the details of life in an
Indian camp. The clothing made from skins
prepared in this fashion never loses the char-
acteristic odor. Men and women wearing this
clothing carry with them always the agreeable
smoky smell. Kipling's poetical and highly
descriptive allusion to "a silent smoky Indian
that I know" applies to an Indian of the great
timber belts of the American Continent east and
west and especially to the Indian of the North-
west and of Alaska. In other words, it applies
to the tribes that smoke the dressed skins from
which they make their clothing.

The other important industry consists in the
manufacture of articles from birchbark. These
products vary from drinking cups to the big
canoes which carry eight or ten people. Food
dishes, cooking vessels, bowls, basins, tubs are
all made from birchbark. The manufacture of
these articles shows a great deal of skill and of

7i

artistic taste. The borders are always bound
with spruce roots, sometimes beautifully decorated.
Especially neat and decorative are the cradles or
baby carriers of birchbark bound with spruce
roots. The canoes are built with flat bottoms,
sloping sides, shallow draught, and with high
pointed ends. They vary in size from light one
man canoes to the larger ones that I have men-
tioned. As the birch trees do not grow large,
no canoe is ever made of a single piece of bark
like many of the Penobscot canoes in Maine and
New Brunswick. The small pieces are fastened
to the ribs separately and the joints are covered
with balsam.

The furniture in an Indian house consists of
piles of skins on which the various members sleep
or upon which they sit or lie during idle hours
in the day. The hearth is in the middle of the
floor below the smoke hole in the roof. The sum-
mer houses are built of brush and the winter
houses of logs.

It is always difficult to obtain from a primi-
tive people much information about their religious
life. Luke and John, having visited a Mission,
were particularly reticent on this subject, and
our efforts did not elicit any information that
could be regarded as trustworthy. However,

72

I obtained accidentally a bit of authentic informa-
tion of real interest, to throw some light on the
subject.

One day when I visited the Indian encamp-
ment, Luke was sick. He lay on his skins, closely
attended by his wife, who sat beside him. I had
not been long in the tent before I discovered
that Luke had something hidden under the edge
of his furs that he did not wish me to see. It
was evident that this object claimed special care
and devotion on the part of both Luke and his
wife. After much persuasion, the Indian lifted
the edge of his robe and showed me a wooden
image about twelve inches long wrapped in furs
and with three feathers attached to the head.
He would on no consideration let me take it in
my hand or let it out of his possession. To test
his faith in his idol I offered him one thing after
another without any effect. On another day,
after he got well, I tried him again, offering as a
test almost everything in our trading outfit, but
the result was the same as before. All my offers
were firmly rejected until I was convinced that
under no consideration would Luke part from his
image in which he evidently had great faith.
The utmost that I could accomplish was to induce
him to let me photograph the image while he

73

held it in his hand. He was entirely unwilling
to disclose any of the secrets connected with it,
except that in answer to my signs intimating
that it had made him well, he admitted that it
had.

Our camp at Lake Minchumina lay at the end
of a point of land and commanded a good view
of the lake in all directions. Our situation and
surroundings presented many attractive features.
We were in the heart of what might be called an
uninhabited country, for the only Indian village
in the whole region was the one I have men-
tioned, on the shores of the lake, and in winter,
when all the inhabitants of this village had re-
turned, its population did not exceed twenty-
five men, women and children. In summer
even these remove themselves to a distance,
and in July of 1907, the only inhabitants of
the region lying along our route extending from
the Toklat to the Totzona were the two men,
three women and two children whom I have
mentioned.

Five and six children in a family are not un-
common if Luke was to be relied upon, but there
is a high mortality among the very young children.
The average number of children born in a family
is small, and large families such as one sees fre-

74

quently among white people are unheard of.
I cannot enter into a discussion of the reasons
for small families. In fact, I do not know the
reason. I once met a man who had lived for a
time among a savage tribe on an island in the
South Seas. He had made the observation that
the number of children in a family was never
more than three. He also made the discovery
that the people could count only to three, their
sense of number not running to higher values.
The traveler, who was of a scientific mind, found
in the latter observation a complete explanation
of the former, because, as pointed out, no man
would wish to have more children than he could
count.

This perfectly good explanation does not hold
in the case of Alaskan Indians — Luke and John
could count to two hundred at least.

The sense of solitude about Lake Minchumina
was greatly emphasized by the absence of game,
for we saw not a trace of any of the larger ani-
mals, moose, caribou, or bear that make their
home in the northern country.

The most impressive feature of our situation,
however, accentuating the silence and solitude,
was the great mountain mass that the Indians
call Denali. From this point it bears directly

75

south according to the compass.* Looking directly
south across the lake we commanded at all times
a most spectacular and absorbing view of this
lonely mountain, looking down upon the wilder-
ness from its four white miles of altitude and
dominating the northern world. In part its sides
seemed sheer. On its right and left flanks, like
flying buttresses, jagged walls were thrust out.
Its face was seamed and scarred and we could
hear even at that distance the thunder of the
avalanches.|

Men have always associated mountains with
their gods. When Zeus and his troupe performed,
the stage was set on Olympus, Moses went up into
Sinai to meet Yaweh. The Kikuyu say that
God lives in lonely grandeur on the top of Kenya,
and who shall say that it was not a similar feeling
that moved the Alaskan Indian to call his moun-

* In the view shown facing p. 44 the mountain is seen from a
point on the meridian of Denali where it intersects the Kantishna
just below the Fork. This point is about fifty miles north of the
mountain. (See view facing pp. 60, 62.)

f Mountain photographs, especially when made from a distance,
are never satisfactory or adequate. In the camera, mountains lose
their magnitude, depress their height and change their proportions.
Therefore in addition to our photographs made with a 6}4 x 8}4
camera and on glass plates, I sketched the mountain both from
the Kantishna where we had the first grand view of it and from
the lake. Finished drawings made from these sketches are repro-
duced here in addition to the photograph to give some faint idea
of its appearance.

76

THE AUTHOR ON THE TEN MILE PORTAGE

tain The High One or The Most High? Alto-
gether it was a very wonderful scene, and our
camp at Lake Minchumina was a camp of pure
enjoyment.

I feel impelled to take this occasion to refer
again to certain matters of geographical interest.
I do so with the less hesitation because the trip
which I am describing had no geographical object
in view. The particular matter that I have in
mind is the naming of natural features, such as
mountains and rivers on this continent. I was
impressed during all my intercourse with the
few Indians in Alaska that their geographical
knowledge is very considerable, they travel ex-
tensively and they have names for every topo-
graphical feature of the country. These names
have always certain attributes to recommend
them; they have been spoken by untold genera-
tions of men and handed down in the native
tongues of the land from unknown antiquity.
They are, therefore, a part of the inheritance of
the human race and especially of Americans.
These place names have, moreover, in each
instance a most appropriate significance; they
carry with them local associations of special
meaning and they hand down long traditions of
man's relation with nature.

77

It has always appeared to me that such argu-
ments as these should make a powerful appeal
to American geographers and explorers and to
the national conscience. It is more than a matter
of sentiment, but even if I were appealing to
sentiment alone I should expect the ancient
Indian name of a place to make a nobler appeal
in this particular connection, than the name of
a contemporary politician or the name of any
man of our time.

When I returned from Alaska in 1907 I deliv-
ered a series of lectures in which I made this
plea, with special reference to the mountain that
on the later maps bears the name McKinley,
but which, as Chief Henry told me at Tanana
in 1905, and as the Minkhotana Indians told me
in 1907, had been known to them and their
ancestors as Denali, "The High One/' Would
not eveiyone interested in history and tradition
like to see that name preserved?

The view southward from our camp on Lake
Minchumina embraced another mountain of the
Alaskan range a little to the west of Denali but
not so high. For this mountain the Indians had
two names. One of these names is Menlale and
the other is Sultana. Both these names are
Indian words. The first means "Denali's wife"

78

and the other means "The Woman." Yet on the
United States Government map this smaller
mountain enjoys the name Mt. Foraker.*

Speaking of names reminds me that wherever
we passed on our route a river that was not indi-
cated or not named on any published map, we
endeavored to learn and record the Indian name.
In this we had no difficulty, and in my notes
made in 1907 I find only two important streams
which we passed on our route of which I failed
to record the name. One of these is the South
Fork of the Kantishna, which I find on the latest
government maps in this year, 191 7, is called
McKinley River. The other is the Bear Paw.
I know, however, that the Indians had names
for these streams as for all the others.

The Indians of the lake country knew every
stream flowing into the Kantishna and into the
lake itself as well as those flowing into the North

* Four years after our journey Archdeacon Stuck of Alaska in
a winter journey from the Tanana to the Innoko to visit the new
mining camp, passed Lake Minchumina and got the same view
of the mountain that I have described in this chapter. See TEN
THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED by Hudson Stuck,
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914, p. 305. Archdeacon Stuck later
(in 1913) climbed the mountain itself, and has given an eloquent
account of his achievement, (THE ASCENT OF DENALI, by
Hudson Stuck, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914). I am in entire
accord with the views expressed by the author in his preface to
that book.

79

Fork of the Kuskokwim, which they call Tichin-
inik. The lowest branch of the Kantishna is
called the Toklat. The stream now marked on
the government map published in 1916 as "Birch
Creek" was known to the Indians as Nutchitali-
chaket. The one that flows into the lake at the
outlet from the direction of Mount Denali and
which does not appear on any map except our own,
they called Kwalana, and the stream that enters
the lake at its upper end they called Tonzolana.

At the same time that I offer the foregoing
frank criticism of geographers and map makers
in the matter of names, I wish to record the
grateful feelings which I am sure everyone will
share with me that the same maps that give the
names of McKinley and Foraker preserve such
Indian names as Minchumina, Kantishna and
Tanana. If this happy method could be more
generally followed in making the maps of country
newly explored I believe that no loss would result
and something would be gained, something for
which posterity might perhaps be grateful.

At the end of six days in camp we felt com-
pletely rested. In the meantime, we had turned
over in our minds our next course of action and
exchanged ideas on this important subject. The
thought had gradually come to each of us inde-
80

pendently that this would be a capital place to
spend the remainder of the summer and the
following winter. When the idea was first men-
tioned we found that the same thought had been
taking form in both our minds since the day we
arrived at the lake. Back of my own thought
was the fascination of the wilderness and the
desire for further adventure, and coupled with
this was a very natural desire to pursue further
a knowledge of the Indians who live on Lake
Minchumina and who would not return from the
hunting grounds till winter. By spending the
winter with them I could undoubtedly procure
a collection that would admirably illustrate the
arts and industries and the various activities of
the original inhabitants of this part of the con-
tinent, and I could learn a great deal of their
language, their habits of thought and their gen-
eral conduct of life. To make such a study
would require spending the winter' with the
Indians, when men who live by their hunting
have time to talk and when their legends and
myths come to them and may be told.

We got so far in this plan that we thought we
would spend the rest of the summer and as much
more time as necessary in climbing Mount Denali,
which at that time had never been climbed.

Then, unfortunately, came reflection upon my
part. I remembered that I was expected at my
post of duty in November, and it was borne in
upon my mind that though I might not need
civilization just then, it was clear that civiliza-
tion had certain claims upon me. Moreover, it
would be impossible to send word out to explain
our non-appearance, and this would certainly
cause uneasiness among our friends. We finally
decided to proceed upon our journey.

With many regrets, we broke our camp on Lake
Minchumina, where we had spent six happy days,
growing lazy and faring sumptuously on game
and fish. And this reminds me that in the clear
water of the lake, unlike the rivers on which we
had spent so much time, we caught fish in abun-
dance, white fish and grayling, both of excellent
flavor. It was only necessary to throw out a
hook with spoon bait in front of the camp and
we had in a few seconds one or the other of
these good sized fish.

82

CHAPTER V

NlGGERHEAD AND MUSKEG

On August the first we started for the head
of the portage, having bargained with the Indians
to guide and help us transport our canoe and
outfit across. In their two birchbark canoes
they led the way up the lake and we all landed
on a rather steep bank where we could see no
sign of a trail. The ground was fairly open
though very rough and encumbered with a low
scrub growth of spruce. We mustered, besides
our two selves, the two Indians and seven dogs.
When the animals discovered that they were to
be put to work carrying packs, their efforts to
escape and their loud protests after they were
caught, made one of the most lively sights I have
ever seen. When the packs had been once ad-
justed to their backs Indian fashion, however,
they trotted off quietly enough after their masters,
but were always coming to grief by getting tangled
on bushes and snags and making their trouble
known in a most vociferous way till they were
set free.

After dividing our outfit, each one of us being

83

provided with a pack, we found that we could
carry everything at once except one pack and
the canoe. These we left for a back trip. In
this way we walked two miles and came to a
small lake of which the Indian name is Chilko-
gamina, perhaps a half mile across, with a small
stream running into it. Here we made camp and
prepared to pass the night. While my brother
superintended these arrangements, I returned
with one of the Indians to fetch the one pack
we had left, for I did not entirely trust the native
alone. When we had fed ourselves and the dogs
we turned in, feeling that we were fortunate in
having the two Indians to help us over a portage
which proved rough and hard going at best, and
which in places was so boggy that with our heavy
packs we sank nearly to our knees in a kind of
slushy mixture of moss, roots of vegetation and
icy water. To be more brief as well as technically
accurate, we found that the trail consisted of
niggerhead and muskeg.

On low flat ground such as occurred at inter-
vals on this portage the moss often takes the
form of rounded tufts which soak up and hold
water exactly like so many sponges and form an
irregular surface which is so soft and saturated
with water that one sinks deep at every step in
84

the oozy mass. This is what is called nigger-
head and muskeg in the language of the North.
Muskeg is the Ojibway Indian word for a swamp.
The other word explains itself.

When we woke in the morning we found that
the Indians had decamped. There was nothing
to be done, so we consigned Luke and John to
a place that they must have heard of at the
Mission (but which does not appear on any map
of Alaska), and prepared to do all the portaging
ourselves.

While we were eating our breakfast, a disturb-
ing thought assailed us. Had those rascally
apostles stolen our canoe? We washed up the
dishes, fastened up the tent door and walked
back the two miles to the landing place. There
was the canoe exactly as we had left it and no
sign of the Indians. Turning the canoe bottom
up and crouching under the thwarts, we had no
great difficulty in getting into an upright posi-
tion, each man with a thwart across his shoulders.
In this way we carried our canoe over the soft,
wet ground (I mean the niggerhead and muskeg)
to the pond where we had made our last camp.
We found that we had to put down our load and
rest about every quarter of a mile, and we also
found that the thwarts that supported the load

85

on our shoulders cut unmercifully into our necks.
I have already said that the weight of the canoe
when dry, was 180 pounds. At this time it
must have been a good deal heavier.

To make this weight ride easier we afterwards
cut out a semi-circular piece from the center of
each of the two end thwarts so that they resem-
bled yokes to fit our necks. Taking two heavy
woolen undershirts, we cut them up and rolled
them into two cushions which we fastened round
the edges of the yoke shaped thwarts where they
rested on our shoulders. With this device we
found that we could support the weight of the
canoe with entire comfort.

We still had the small lake to cross and we
had to find the trail, if there was one, on the
opposite side. Launching the canoe in the tiny
creek and taking two light packs, we were soon
across the pond, which was strewn with a kind
of yellow pond lily. Following the margin we
searched for signs that would indicate a trail
and soon found a place where the rank grass
growing on the bank had been trodden down
and a few steps on shore brought us into a dis-
tinct Indian trail. We followed this for four
miles, carrying the two light packs, and satisfied
ourselves that it was the trail across the divide
86

and that it led directly to the source of the
Kuskokwim.

We had as yet seen no signs of any white men
having passed that way and we had almost con-
cluded that the Indians had invented the story
of the two white men having preceded us ten
days before our arrival. Indeed, their story
seemed altogether improbable. We remembered
that as we ascended the Kantishna we had seen
no trace of white men having at any time pre-
ceded us above the deserted town where we had
spent three days. We had seen no camping
place and no signs except the signs that Indians
leave to be read as messages by other Indians
who may pass, such as a split twig or an arrow
fastened on a tree. The remains of a white man's
fire can always be recognized, and on the upper
Kantishna we had seen none.

However, we had not gone far on the trail
across the divide before we began to see unmis-
takable signs that white men had preceded us
there. There were marks on the ground where
some heavy object had been dragged along and
we saw an improvised roller that had been left
behind. These indications showed that men had
dragged a poling boat over that ground not very-
long before.

87

Leaving our packs and returning to camp, we
soon brought the outfit across the pond and
pitched our tent again at the end of the trail.
Then we made four packs consisting of every-
thing except the tent, sleeping outfit, cooking out-
fit and some provisions for supper and breakfast.
Each of these four packs weighed about 95 pounds,
and we carried them that evening a distance of
one and a half miles to a ridge of higher and
dryer ground, making two trips and returning
to camp to sleep.

Next morning, August 4th, we made up the
tent, blankets, grub box, tarpaulin and cooking
outfit into two packs weighing 95 pounds each
and packed these forward four miles to a place
where we had left the first two packs on the
previous day. This first cache was situated on
a rising ground or low hill. The first mile was
soft ground consisting of niggerhead and muskeg.
Then came a low hill, then some soft ground and
water, then another low hill followed by soft
ground and lastly the low hill on the near side of
which we made our first cache. This meant
making a back trip of four miles and carrying the
canoe that distance and making two back trips
of two and a half miles for the four packs that
we had carried a short distance on the third.

To get water for drinking and cooking pur-
poses during these days on the portage we dug
water holes beside the trail and cleared out old
ones that the Indians had used, and these holes
soon became filled with water, for the earth is
everywhere saturated. A foot below the sur-
face the ground is frozen solid and this frozen
condition extends to great depths, a hundred
feet or more; consequently the rain water is not
absorbed, but lies on the surface where it is
soaked up and held by the thick moss and matted
roots of vegetation, exactly as a sponge holds water.

There was a feature of the vegetation on the
low hills that deserves special mention for the
delight we had in it. Wide stretches were cov-
ered with a luxuriant growth of blueberry bushes,
and as it was the season when they were ripe
and our appetites for fresh fruit had become
very keen, we stopped on each back trip to eat
blueberries. We found them delicious and cer-
tainly never enjoyed fruit so much. We gathered
a pailful to add to our stock of provisions, a very
positive improvement in our bill of fare which
was becoming more and more luxurious, with fat
canvasbacks, geese, white fish, pickerel and now
fresh fruit. This was a great improvement on
the boiled beans and salt bacon with which we

89

served ourselves at every meal for twenty days
of the hardest work of the entire trip. Let me
say, however, that we enjoyed the beans and
bacon.

At the end of August 5th, after the day's work
that I have described, we had our camp pitched
a distance of four miles from the pond and six
and a half miles from the lake and everything
had been carried to that point and made snug.
How much of the portage remained we were still
in doubt, but we knew that it must have an end,
and we knew that we could keep on carrying till
we had reached the end of it.

To satisfy our curiosity, however, we set out
on the morning of the sixth to find how far we
were from the Kuskokwim. We had gone about
two miles when we came suddenly upon a big
poling boat lying in the trail, an outfit piled
beside it, a tent and two white men getting their
breakfast. We had no occasion to be surprised,
because, as I have explained, we had found their
trail, but if I said the two men were surprised,
I would be using very mild language.

Absolutely secure in their feeling that there
were no human beings about except themselves,
and that they were alone and safe from intrusion,
they, like ourselves, were keeping no lookout and

90

we came quite close before we were observed.
One was about to enter the tent and had his
back towards us; the other was standing over
the fire with a frying pan, when a twig snapped
under our feet. Looking up from his anticipa-
tion of fried bacon, and seeing us fifteen yards
away, his thoughts were so violently diverted
that he dropped his frying pan, made a dive
towards the tent door, where he butted with a
shout into his companion's back. The latter
inquired in language of great vigor what he
thought he was doing, but in the middle of a
well rounded period, he caught sight of us and
the sentence was never finished; the two then
suddenly bolted together into the tent, where
they remained looking us over through the nar-
row door. In this position we presently engaged
them in conversation and in a few minutes they
had recovered from the shock of their surprise.

They had reconnoitred the whole portage and
told us it was only two miles more to the Kusko-
kwim. These two men were on their way to
what was known as the South Fork on a pros-
pecting trip and were prepared to spend two
years up there in the wilds shut off completely
from human communication of any kind. They
were typical of the prospector breed to whom

9i

the "great strike" is always ahead and hidden
somewhere in the unknown.

On the same day we packed all but the tent,
cooking outfit and sleeping outfit and canoe down
to the banks of the Kuskokwim which, at this
point near its source, is a small stream of clear
water with high and steep banks.

On the seventh of August we carried the canoe
over the last four miles of the portage, returned
and packed the tent and sleeping outfit and
cooking outfit and made camp beside the Kus-
kokwim. On each trip during these two days
we passed and repassed the two prospectors
laboriously hauling their heavy boat on rollers
over the rough ground. On several points they
showed a great deal of interest: they were curious
and rather incredulous about the canoe; for, after
lifting it some half dozen times, they estimated
that it weighed well over two hundred pounds,
perhaps as much as two hundred and fifty; they
wondered that anyone should have undertaken
the trip at all in a canoe, for the poling boat
was accepted as the one thing fit for the condi-
tions of travel presented by Alaskan rivers. They
seemed all at once, and for the first time, to doubt
the truth and wisdom of that idea and paid us
the compliment of saying as we left them behind
92

on the trail that we had taught them something
new.

The portage between Lake Minchumina and
the head of the Kuskokwim is about ten and a
half miles according to our careful calculation,
for we had no means of measuring distance. We
were altogether seven days on this portage from
August first to August seventh, inclusive. We
made our outfit into seven packs averaging ninety-
five pounds each. As to the weight of the canoe,
I am inclined to think that the men were right
and that at the time its weight was scarcely less
than 200 pounds. I say this because when
weighed it was perfectly dry, whereas at the
portage its woodwork had been absorbing water
since we started, and in its saturated condition
must have been much heavier than its dry weight
of 180 pounds. In carrying the canoe we set it
down and rested about every quarter of a mile.
In picking it up we turned it on its edge, crouched
on our knees with our shoulders to the thwarts,
let it tip towards us as far as possible until at
a signal we were able to rise together and to
balance it on our shoulders at the same time.

At 8.30 o'clock on the morning of the 8th we
had the canoe loaded and were ready to start down
the Kuskokwim, with no information about it

93

except that there was a branch known to pros-
pectors as the South Fork and called by the
Indians the Istna coming in from the south, a
few days' journey down. It was for this river
that the two prospectors of the portage were
heading.

94

CHAPTER VI
On the Upper Kuskokwim

We had no sooner started down the Kuskokwim
than the feeling was borne in upon us that we
were in virgin territory, where man, at least
civilized man, and nature were still strangers.
Certainly man was an unfamiliar object to the
birds and beasts, and especially to the game
which had not yet learned that his presence
was a signal for alarm. Ducks and geese appeared
in great numbers and even after we had shot,
appeared to remain so tame that we could
approach to within a few yards of them. To
anyone who knows the habits of the wild goose,
this must seem odd. Now these geese (the
old birds) had migrated from regions further
south, where presumably they were acquainted
with men and with hunters and sportsmen.
They had gone to the far North to breed. The
season's young were now full grown, fat and in
perfect condition. It would seem natural to
suppose that the experience of the old birds in
inhabited countries would serve them also in
uninhabited territory and that consequently they

95

would take alarm at the sight of men. It seems,
however, that the instinctive fear of man and
the gun, a habit acquired under one set of condi-
tions, is in abeyance where the same conditions
do not prevail and that the same lessons have to
be learned again.

It was not many hours after we had started
that we had shot five geese from the canoe.
We could easily have shot more if we had cared
to do so.

At noon we lunched on a sand-bar in a shower
of rain. We were again in the spruce timber.
In the afternoon a rainstorm came up with very
heavy black clouds and the downpour was so
great that it threatened to fill the canoe and we
had to bail frequently. During the progress
of the storm we heard the roar of rapids ahead
and rounding a bend we came in sight of the
broken water, a longish rapid without any apparent
obstruction to our passage, though we could not
tell how near the rocks might be to the broken
surface. We headed into midstream and as we
struck the rapids there occurred a very bewildering
and for the moment a startling thing. As we
shot down with the noise and rush of the water
about us, there broke in a deep rumble accom-
panied by a sharp crackling. All these noises,

96

mingling together, produced a most indescribable
effect as in the storm and confusion we shot down
into the smooth water below. It was only after
we were in comparative quiet that we realized
that the loud rumbling and crashing noise was
a peal of thunder. We had not heard thunder
since the 26th of July and we did not hear it
again during that summer.

Two more rapids were passed and the rain
still continued in torrents. Suddenly to our
surprise we saw ahead a log cabin on a high bank
and, heading towards it, we found it empty and
deserted, but quite dry and snug. Soon we were
installed under this accidental roof and very
grateful for its unexpected shelter.

The interior of the cabin was about ten feet
by twelve. It was new, that is to say, it had
been built the previous summer and had been
occupied during the winter by a trapper, who
had evidently made his way across from the
Yukon to try his luck in the new hunting ground.
He had evidently set his line of traps, tended
them all winter, with what luck I cannot say,
and in the spring had gone out the way he came,
packing his furs along with him.

Having taken possession, we set about to make
ourselves comfortable and to that end made

97

use of the resources of the place. These resources
consisted of an empty Standard Oil can and
about a dozen empty butter tins. Everyone
knows what a Standard Oil can looks like. It
is a familiar sight in every part of the world. The
traveler cannot escape it. He will find it in the
Amazon Jungle, on the Andean heights, in the
heart of Africa, in the Soudan, on the Himalayan
slopes, the Russian steppes. He will find it
among people of every complexion, in every
degree of civilization, doing duty in many differ-
ent ways. I have myself seen it serving as a
water bucket, a milk can, a flower pot, a food
dish, a torn torn, a liquid measure, a shopping
bag, a trunk, a mouse trap, a slop jar, a peddler's
box, a medicine man's charm and a variety of
uses besides. It seemed, therefore, quite natural
that we should find it in the uninhabited forests
of Alaska and that we should put it to a new
use, for which I am now prepared to recommend it.
The builder of the cabin undoubtedly had
brought with him the portable article known as
the Yukon stove and had taken it away with
him. In one corner of the roof there was a small
hole where he had placed his stove pipe. In the
course of making ourselves at home in our dripping
clothes, I called Mac's attention to this hole
98

in the roof and remarked that, having the hole,
all we needed was a stove and stove pipe. In a
little while we had these also, for we manufactured
the one out of the Standard Oil can and the other
out of the butter tins.

Next day the rain still fell steadily but was
much less heavy. We decided to remain at home.
We made a feast. Outside the door of the cabin
we set up a piece of canvas to shed the rain and
this was our kitchen. A proper camp fire was
carefully arranged with ample back logs to hold
and reflect the heat. A fine fat goose was plucked
and dressed and stuffed and trussed and it was
as neat a job as ever was performed. That
goose was cooked on a spit turned in front of the
fire and basted in the drippings of its own fat.
When it was done it was fit for any table what-
ever. Blueberries stewed in sugar was our
dessert; we had plenty of coffee and excellent
tobacco. I have never enjoyed a banquet so
much in my life.

All the time we kept the stove red hot to dry
out the cabin and drive away the damp chill
that was already beginning to make itself felt
after the heavy rain.

In fact, this thunderstorm marked the turn
of the season and from that day onwards it con-

99

tinued to grow cooler. The vegetation on the
banks already exhibited the bright autumn tints,
brilliant reds and yellows predominating. The
mosquitoes disappeared and though for a short
time they were replaced by a very annoying
black gnat, it was a great relief.

On the ioth of August, the weather being fine,
we left our temporary lodgings in the log cabin
and on that day we passed four more rapids.

On the day following we descended a very
beautiful stretch of river; the water was slack
and dark and placid and reflected the sloping
banks and the thick growth of spruce timber
that made an uninterrupted fringe on either side.
The timber gradually grew larger as we descended
and many of the tall trees were two feet in diameter
near the base. The Kuskokwim runs a very
tortuous course, turning about and winding and
forming many wide loops and bends.

In the afternoon we came to the Indian en-
campment for which we had been on the lookout.
It was on the left bank and consisted of three
fairly large brush shelters, a summer encampment.

The Indians at Minchumina had prepared us
not to expect to find many people at this camp
until the hunting season was over. We found
just one very ancient Indian. He was the only
ioo

IX THE DESERTED CABIN ON THE TICHININIK

Indian I ever saw anywhere who exhibited sur-
prise and excitement, as he did at our appearance.
He had evidently never seen white men before
and was clearly afraid. We could make little
of him and after making him some slight presents
we continued our journey.

Some time in the afternoon of the second day
after leaving the old Indian we caught a regular
succession of sharp sounds, like the rattle of oars
in the rowlocks. Something and probably some-
body was approaching round the bend. Then
we heard voices quite near and distinct and in a
moment more we came upon two white men in
two boats. With their backs to us as they worked
their oars, they did not see us till we glided noise-
lessly to within ten yards of them and spoke.
Both were trappers and each was in a boat that
he had built himself. They had come in different
directions out of the wilderness and had met
accidentally on the Kuskokwim two days before.
One had just come down the South Fork, where
he had spent three years absolutely alone. Dur-
ing that time he had not seen a human being,
Indian or white man. The other had spent
the winter alone trapping on the Tacotna, but
in the spring some prospectors had appeared
and the region no longer suited him. He resolved

IOI

to move to where the solitudes were still secure
from the unwelcome intrusion of his fellow men.
Propelling his boat day after day up the Kuskok-
wim, he met the man from the South Fork coming
down. The latter was oblivious of the presence
of white men on the lower Kuskokwim and
when he learned from the man from the Tacotna
that there were prospectors in the country he
decided that he was going in the wrong direction.
In a few minutes the two men had entered into
a partnership and decided to ascend to the head
of the Kuskokwim, build a cabin and try their
luck trapping together during the following winter.
We drew our canoe alongside the two boats
and there we sat talking for three-quarters of an
hour. They asked us what month it was and
what day of the month. They did not ask us
the day of the week. They were particularly
anxious to know what the upper river and the
country about it were like and inquired in what
direction we had come. What we told them
interested them very much. Their own stories
were told very simply and laconically. They
never asked us for news of the outside world.
The subject was never mentioned once and they
gave us no message for friends or kindred. We
gave them some tobacco and flour, they gave

I02

us some fresh fish and we parted. Like almost
all the men one meets alone in the wilds of the
North, they were simple, well spoken, quiet
mannered and kindly men. I cannot help wonder-
ing what luck they had and what befell them
afterwards. It is not likely that either of them
will ever read these lines and yet in a world like
this, such a thing is not impossible. We never
knew their names, for we did not inquire and
they did not ask ours. It did not occur to any
of us, for names meant nothing in such circum-
stances.

Half an hour after leaving the two trappers
we came to a large stream which comes in on
the left and brings a great deal of silt and has a
swift current. This is the stream which the
Indians call Totzona, and which I first heard
of from Chief Henry at Tanana in 1905.

The days were now growing rapidly shorter
and the nights longer and darker. The weather
became clear and cold. When we awoke each
morning we found a beautiful hoar frost over
everything. Turning out became a brisk exercise
in the clear, crisp air. Mosquitoes and black
flies had all gone and there was nothing to mar
our comfort.

One day we had a curious experience with a

103

mirage. Rounding a bend we saw, several miles
ahead, a large city on the left bank. It had
many houses and tall buildings and cathedral
spires. Even more astonishing, two large steamers,
evidently men-of-war (for their hulls were black),
lay in mid-stream. Now we knew very well
that there could be no such city on the Kuskokwim
and we knew that no man-of-war had entered
that river. Yet there was the city and there
were the men-of-war and we had them before us
long enough to observe them well before they
seemed to lose their substantial shape and then
suddenly we saw nothing but a high bank with
a solitary hut on it and a line of dead timber
extending along the bluff. In mid-stream were
two Indians in their birchbark canoes, paddling
leisurely along. These were the elements out
of which the mirage had been in some way con-
structed. The Indians told us that their village
was a short distance down stream.

On the eighth day after leaving the portage
we passed the East Fork (Chedotlotna) and
later, on the same day, we passed the two out-
lets of the South Fork (Istna), which are so far
apart that we were three hours after passing the
upper before we arrived at the lower outlet.

The Upper Kuskokwim, the North Fork, the
104

Tichininik of the Minkhotana Indians, is clear
dark water, in places swift and in other places
slack. The Chedotlotna and the Istna are muddy
water, carrying in suspension a heavy charge of
silt. From this point in our journey, therefore,
the river was muddy and of a grayish brown
color. It was by the Istna that Spurr and Post
reached the Kuskokwim from Cook's Inlet in
1898 when they followed the river to its mouth.
Here we met another Indian in a canoe. He was
dressed in caribou skins and carried a bow and
arrows. He told us by signs that a little further
down we would find other Indians.

It was about this time that we were brought
into touch with a tragedy of the wilds, which,
though I find no reference to it in my notes, is
still fresh in my memory. I think it was opposite
the mouth of the Istna that we saw a small log
cabin on the right bank and what particularly
attracted our attention was a tall pole standing
on the shore with a tattered red rag fluttering
at the top of it. We landed below this pole and
found fastened to it, about five feet from the
ground, a small wooden tablet with some writing
in pencil nearly obliterated by the weather.
We entered the cabin a few yards away and
at once recognized from the smell and other grue-

105

some signs that death and decay had but recently
occupied that lonely dwelling. We had no
difficulty in reading the story. A solitary trapper
had built the cabin during the previous summer
and in the winter when the thermometer ranged
from thirty to sixty degrees below he had sickened.
When he realized his condition he erected the
pole with the red rag as a signal, on the slender
chance of someone passing on the river. He
kept a diary during these days and as he grew
weaker and weaker and finally unable to rise,
having barricaded the door to keep out the
wolves, he made his entries day by day. When
he was found his diary lay beside him on the
couch where he died.

In the spring when the ice moved out of the
river, an Indian passing in his canoe, discovered
the tragedy and made haste down to the Tacotna
to report it to the white men there. He found
at the new station Peter McGrath, who at once
took a party of men and went up to investigate.
They buried the body and the diary and other
belongings were sent out to the United States
District Court at Nome, with the exception of
a fine old iron blade made by the Indians that
was found in the cabin.

When we arrived at the mouth of the Tacotna
1 06

we met McGrath, a man whom I had known at
Nome in 1905 and who was now United States
Deputy Marshal for the new diggings on the
Tacotna, or rather the Innoko. From him we
learned all the details that I have just related.
I tried later to obtain a copy of the dead man's
diary, but was unable to do so. I unfortunately
let several years go by before making the attempt,
and it seemed to have been lost.

The night after we met the lone Indian we
camped at the mouth of a large stream coming
in on the left, where we found a small Indian
encampment. The Indians called this river
the Keklone and they said it had a branch called
the Ishishna. They had little in the way of pos-
sessions and told us that the Indian villages
were farther down the river.

On the second day after this we arrived at
the mouth of the Tacotna, where, as we had
been led to expect from the trappers, we found
white men camped and a small trading post
already established. This post had just been
built. A prospector who had penetrated from
the Yukon to the head of a stream called the
Innoko reported the discovery of gold in its bed.
This discovery was considered more accessible
from the Kuskokwim than from the Yukon and

107

hence the invasion of the former river in the
spring preceding our arrival, the establishment of
the little post at the mouth of the Tacotna,
and the consequent disgust of the trapper whom
we had met up river seeking another retreat.

1 08

A WOMAN OF THE SIKMIUT

CHAPTER VII
The Village Life

Although we had been looking for an Indian
town ever since we launched our canoe on the
Kuskokwim, and although the few Indians we
met on that stream told us that their village was
farther down, nevertheless, Sikmiut was a sur-
prise to us. When we landed below the village
we were met by a tall Indian who conducted
us at once to the largest house, where we were
met by another Indian nearly as tall as the first
and we knew that we were in the presence of the
chief. At no other point on our journey, either
before or after, were we treated with so much
attention or with any show of ceremony. There
was an exchange of greetings and some talk which,
though by no means easy, was facilitated by
several fortunate circumstances. In the first
place, every intelligent Indian has an instinctive
understanding of dumb show, and this chief was
a very intelligent Indian. In the second place,
I found that I was not entirely unacquainted
with the chief's language and he was not entirely
unacquainted with ours. He had been down

109

the river to the Moravian Mission at its mouth
and there had picked up a small English vocabu-
lary. In a few minutes we were conducted to a
house near that of the chief, which I believe also
belonged to him or to one of his family who was
absent with his own family. Our things were
then carried up from the canoe and we were made
at home.

The Sikmiut people we found more comely
and better kept than any we had seen. The
first thing that struck us was the diversity of
physical type among the inhabitants of this
village, for though the Tinneh features and stature
stood out distinctly in a majority, there were
many individuals in whom this type was greatly
modified and there was a third class of individuals
totally unlike the Tinneh in features and in stature
and who represented an Eskimo element. The
first class and the last were sharply distinguished.

The second fact by which we were struck was
that our new friends spoke a language that was
not Tinneh but Innuit and that corresponded
closely to the language of the coast Eskimo.
This I could recognize at once from the little
knowledge of Eskimo that I had acquired during
my visit to the Bering Sea coast in 1905. I
now made good use of that small knowledge
no

and also of Father Francis Barnum's grammar
and dictionary of the Innuit language. That
admirable study of the language of the Eskimo
on the Western Coast of Alaska was a very great
help from this point in our journey onwards.
It made communication with the natives vastly
easier and constituted a basis for inquiry in
many directions. In our efforts to communicate
with the Indians up river and at the lake we had
no such help, and besides, the Tinneh dialects
are more difficult than the Innuit. Indeed, the
latter is not only a very pleasant sounding
language, but it is simple in structure and does
not offer any difficulties to our pronunciation.
It can be written perfectly well by means of our
alphabet and when once learned it lends itself
to a great variety of expression.

While the same may be true to a somewhat
less extent of the Tinneh dialects, they are, I
believe, more difficult to our ear and harder to
speak correctly.

The name of the Sikmiut village itself is Innuit
in form, for the ending "miut" is the usual suffix
which means in that language, "the people of."

Many of the people were away hunting and
I did not obtain a complete count of the popula-
tion. I counted sixty men, women and children

in

and was informed that more than half the people
were away. Putting various things together,
I gathered that when everyone was at home there
were about one hundred and fifty people in the
village.

There were two chiefs at Sikmiut, a head chief
whose rank was inherited and a second or sub-
chief who was chosen by the first to be his lieu-
tenant and deputy. (It was he that met us as
we landed.) Both were men of ability and it
was clear that they took their duties seriously
and exercised their authority for the good of the
community.

The head chief, as I have said, had visited the
Moravian Mission at the mouth of the river and
had seen and heard something of white men and
their ways. The name Andrew had been bestowed
upon him during his visit and he had adopted
it in addition to the Indian name, after the Indian
fashion of having several names. Indeed, I
did not learn his Indian name, because it is
not polite to inquire and it is a kind of informa-
tion that Indians do not offer even to their most
favored guests.

Similarly the chiefs of the Sikmiut never asked
us our names, but they soon had names for us.
To my brother, who asked about the big game,

112

THE SUB-CHIEF OF THE SIKMIUT

they gave the name Tuntuok and because I
was inquiring about the past and the old tradi-
tions they called me Esantuk (The Old Times).
These names stuck to us down to the mouth
of the river.

Although he had visited the Mission, the
Sikmiut chief had not been converted or baptized
and he had not been greatly impressed by what
he had seen and heard. The teaching, he said,
was good, but it was not better than the things
that his people had taught and practiced always.
He had encountered traders on his journeys
down river and lately white people had made
their appearance in his neighborhood on their
way to the Tacotna. Reports had come to him,
moreover, from the Yukon and from other parts
of the country touching the doings of the white
men. From his observations and from reports,
he was convinced that the presence of the white
men in Alaska was an evil and that they deliber-
ately practiced evil. That being the case, what
did their good teaching matter?

Nothing can be more unfortunate and more
sad than the fact that the representatives of the
superior race that first become known to the
native peoples of this continent are usually far
inferior to these natives in every way. Sikmiut

113

had just arrived at that unfortunate period in
its history, for it lay on the route of the miners
on their way up to the Tacotna, and the little
stampede of the early summer was having its
effect. On this subject the chief was very anxious
and made his anxiety known to us with entire
frankness but without bitterness. He resented
the sudden appearance of the white man on the
river. Some of his people had not yet seen people
of our race and none wished to see them; but
already some of the young men had gone astray,
strong drink had made its appearance and sick-
ness had increased during the summer; there
was general discontent and he foresaw the destruc-
tion of his people in a few years.

The houses of the Sikmiut were built of logs
after the manner of Tinneh houses of the far
interior. Two of the houses had glass panes in
the windows. The floors were on the level of
the ground and never sunken, as are the Eskimo
houses. On the other hand, the arrangement
of the village was in the Eskimo style, with a
kozgee or public hall occupying the central posi-
tion. This kozgee was of relatively small size;
it was not built underground and was not used
for the sweat baths. It was used as a meeting
place and a council chamber, but it was not large

114

■-.J? "

*»**

)!•- 'ill i : -,rr,-c iiikf of the sikmiut

enough to hold the entire population and the
dances and festivals which took place in it were
not on a large scale. The unmarried men some-
times slept in the kozgee, but this was not the
uniform rule. In addition to the kozgee the
Sikmiut village had a bath-house (Mukeiawik)
where the men took their sweat baths.

Although the women held their own and had
a good deal to say, the Sikmiut man was master
in his own house. His wife was by no means so
subservient as is said to be the case among some
of the Tinneh tribes, but she was not possessed
of so much authority as the Eskimo wife on the
coast.

In respect of the costume, the Eskimo style
prevailed almost, but not quite, exclusively, for
here and there were to be seen surviving touches
that could be traced to the Tinneh tradition,
like the headdress sometimes worn by the women.
In their material equipment and their posses-
sions generally the Sikmiut showed a mixture
of Indian and Eskimo culture. The birchbark
dishes of the Indian were in common use and
so were the wooden kantuks, and both were
manufactured with great perfection at Sikmiut.
The bows were those of the interior and unlike
the stout sinew backed bows of the Eskimo.

ii5

The snowshoes were also of Tinneh pattern.
The arrows were tipped with bone or with wood.
The wooden dishes were of two kinds: those
carved from a single piece and those made from
two pieces, and both were admirably made.
The larger and higher ones are made of two pieces,
a flat bottom combined with vertical sides, con-
sisting of a single piece of uniform thickness,
bent round and spliced where the ends come
together. These vessels are either oval or circular
in shape and vary in size from drinking cups
to vessels of about five gallons capacity. They
are as watertight as any cask or firkin and are
as good examples of cooperage as one could see
anywhere. The birchbark vessels are also very
beautifully and neatly made. One type is flat
with sloping sides and the other type is high with
straight sides. The latter is sometimes provided
with a handle. The Sikmiut make no pottery
and no baskets.

The clothing of the Sikmiut is rich in material
and workmanship. The skins of animals furnish
the materials and they are tanned with the fur
and rendered beautifully soft and pliable by an
application of the brains of animals and by rubbing.
The furs used include most of the furbearing
animals of Alaska. The squirrel, marmot, arctic
116

THE DAUGHTER OF THE SUB-CHIEF OF THE SIKMIUT

hare, muskrat, mink, beaver, otter, marten, wolf,
wolverine, caribou and reindeer are employed
in various ways in the manufacture of clothing.
The arctic hare is used for undergarments and
for lining about the necks and hoods of women's
coats. The squirrel, muskrat and marmot are
used for plain working garments of men and
women. The wolverine and wolf skins are used
chiefly for trimmings, the skins of the caribou
are used for making the heavier and rougher
garments, those of the reindeer are cut and let
into the dark furs for decorative effect. Very
pretty dresses for women and little girls are also
made of skins of the young reindeer. For some
reason which I did not learn, fox skins are not
used for clothing. Neither the red fox nor the
white fox nor any of the other varieties of fox,
so much prized by our people, is worn by the
Sikmiut or by any people of Alaska so far as I
could learn.

One of the handsomest dresses that I saw was
one worn occasionally by the belle of the village,
a very comely girl of about sixteen years, still
unmarried, and very well aware of her fresh
beauty. Her ample dress, which she had made
herself and of which she was justly proud, reached
to her ankles and was made of the finest selected

117

mink skins with pieces of light colored reindeer
skin let in. The trimmings were wolf, wolverine
and arctic hare. I noticed that this very attrac-
tive young lady was less reluctant to be photo-
graphed than were some of the older women
whose dresses were not so new.

It was a genuine pleasure to see the well cared
for children of the Sikmiut, whose tasteful and
comfortable clothing was an expression of the
pride and affection of the parents. The little
son and daughter of the sub-chief were in all
respects the children of nobility, a perfect little
lady and gentleman of seven and five. Other
children ran away from us and were too shy
to be photographed, but these two little aristo-
crats, though not bold or forward, were very self
possessed and dignified. The sons and daughters
of the head chief were already grown men and
women with houses of their own.

My efforts to draw from Chief Andrew some
of his personal views and also the customs and
beliefs of his people were well understood by him
and met with a very intelligent response. A
word or two selected from the dictionary, and
helped out by pantomime, would often elicit a
reply which, in a few well chosen words or phrases,
conveyed the information desired and reduced
118

J&SaBilB^—

m^vm

S'l

A V\\ CF THE SIKMIUT. A MIXED ESKIMO AND INDIAN TYPE

to a minimum the use of the dictionary. Besides,
the chief brought to bear the entire resources of
his English vocabulary picked up at the Mission,
and in this way we were in very frequent com-
munication with him.

We stayed two days and a half among the
Sikmiut. We would have liked to stay long
enough to cultivate a closer acquaintance with
them and to become familiar with their customs,
but we had an uncertain journey ahead, the sum-
mer was well spent and we had to be content
with what we had seen and learned, hoping some
day to return.

On the 24th of August, at one o'clock, we left
Sikmiut and a little further down we stopped to
cut a mast for the first time and to rig our sail.
The river was wide and while the wind held we
made good time before it.

On the 26th we passed the site of the old
Russian station at Kolmakoff. The story of
this post is the story of Russian enterprise in
this part of the territory. Ivan Lukeen was born
in California of Russian and Spanish parentage,
and was educated at Sitka. In 1832, while
attached to the fort at Nushagak on Bristol
Bay, he made a journey up the Nushagak River,
crossed a portage to the source of the Holiknuk

119

and explored that river to its confluence with
the Kuskokwim. He then floated down the
latter river for a distance of ninety miles and
built on the site at which we had now arrived
a small fort surrounded by a quadrangular stock-
ade. There he remained for several years in
solitary rulership, adopting the life and language
of the Kuskwogamiut.

In 1835 Glasunoff explored the mouth of the
river and visited Lukeen. The fort was then
strengthened and called a redoubt. In 1841
it was partly burnt by the natives and as a result
the commander of Fort Nushagak, Kolmakoff
by name, went up to rebuild it. From that time
forward it became known as Kolmakoff or Kol-
makofski. In 1866 the redoubt was dismantled.
Like all such establishments of the Russians,
Kolmakoff was during the years from 1836 till
1866 a trading center, visited by native traders
who brought their furs. It appears to have been
a meeting place for the Tinneh Indians from the
interior and the Eskimo from below.

On the 27th we stopped for some hours at the
native village of Ohagamiut. We were now
among the Eskimo in their own undisputed terri-
tory, where their customs were unaffected by
their neighbors. Later on the same day we
120

passed the Yukon portage. At this point the
great bend in the Kuskokwim towards the north
brings it to within twenty miles of the Yukon.
The country between is flat and occupied by a
chain of small lakes. The missionaries and
others visiting the lower Kuskokwim, as well
as the natives, have been accustomed to use this
portage. It had always been used from the
most ancient times by the aboriginal inhabitants
in going to and fro between the two great rivers.
Immediately below this point the Kuskokwim
swings to the south again and enters the sea four
hundred miles from the mouth of the Yukon.
On the same day that we passed the portage
we made camp one mile below the village of
Ogovik, which is ten miles below the portage.
We spent the remainder of the day and half of
the next in the village. Here the Eskimo features
and customs were strongly marked. The in-
habitants of Ohagamiut and Ogovik are pure
Eskimo.

At noon on the 28th we started out in a high
wind with our sprit sail set. The water was
rough and choppy with heavy waves washing
the banks, and we scudded before the wind till
seven o'clock. The wind had been freshening
and threatened to blow a gale. The banks were

121

high and sheer and we were watching anxiously
for a possible landing place and a camping ground.
On our way we passed a mountain whose steep
slope was washed by the river at its base. Later,
by good luck, we spied a break in the right bank
where a footing was afforded at the water's edge
and a means of ascent presented itself.

By the time we had our tent pitched among
the timber, our fire going and our bed of spruce
boughs prepared, it was already dark. Before
we had finished supper and made things snug,
the wind was blowing a gale. It swept the
spruce timber with a great roar. It was a cold,
damp wind and our fire seemed very comfort-
able, protected as we were by the thick growth
and by the larger tree trunks. As the night wore
on, however, we grew rather uneasy, for we
heard one after another of the big trees not far
away in the forest, snapped by the wind and
come crashing down. We did not sleep much
that night, but preferred to sit by our fire, which
was kept going till nearly dawn.

The gale continued to blow all next day with
heavy squalls of rain and we stayed in camp.
We had overcome our anxiety on account of the
falling trees and spent a very cozy and comfort-
able day in camp looking out occasionally from

122

OX THE LOWER KUSKOKWIM

our safe shelter at the river, now whitened by
the wind and thrown in spray against the steep
banks. The canoe we had unloaded and dragged
to a place of safety into the little gulley by which
we had ascended.

On the 30th the wind had moderated and,
being fair, we ventured out under sail. Pretty
soon the wind rose again and we found that we
could not carry so much canvas, so we ran under
a bank, put in a reef and started out again. The
river now spread out very wide and was full
of bad sand-bars that could not be seen. I think
this was the most exciting run we had. The
wind kept rising and the water became very rough
and we had to feel for the deep water and dodge
the sand-bars as we sped along. Our good canoe
carried her load and sailed well. After more
than two hours of the exciting chase we rounded
a bend and the wind came dead ahead, driving
the spray in our faces. By good luck a large
sized slough opened on the left bank and we ran
to it for shelter. Once into it, we were in calm
water and sheltered from the wind. Here we
camped on the low banks of the slough. Again
the gale blew all night and all the next day and
we were glad to remain in our comfortable quarters
for the time.

123

The country was now changed; the timber
gave way to a growth of willow and alder. There
were no longer any high banks or tables of land
lying high above the river as at Kolmakoff.
The river wound through a low flat country
and we were approaching the tundra and facing
a prospect much more desolate and dreary than
the wild picturesqueness of the upper Kuskokwim
and quite different from the high terraces with
forests of spruce timber and stretches of open
mossy ground that we had with us on the middle
reaches of the river. The animal life was also
changed; the ducks and geese were now rare,
but that may have been partly due to their
having already migrated south. The eagles,
both bald and golden, that we saw very frequently
all the way from the lake to the Holiknuk, now
disappeared ; the goshawk, a very frequent visitor
near our camps farther up, came no longer, and
the magpie, seen about Sikmiut, was absent also.
Indeed, there was little animal life of any kind
on this stretch of the river. At Sikmiut and
later at Mamtrelich we were told that in former
times the moose and the caribou came in large
numbers to this country, but that of late years
they had not been seen.

September ist came in calm and clear with an
124

A KUSKWOGAMIUT MAX, SHOWING LABRETS AND EARRINGS

unruffled river stretching away in the bright
sunshine and reflecting the banks.

As we paddled along, the river spread out until
it seemed miles wide with islands and low head-
lands, while the current became imperceptible.
It seemed at this point as if we were on a large
lake rather than a river.

By our calculations we felt that we should be
now near the native village of Mamtrelich and
the Bethel Mission, but we were uncertain whether
it would prove to be one day's journey or two or
more. Early in the afternoon we saw a small
village of three huts on the left bank and paddled
towards it. We found one man at home stand-
ing on the shore to meet us as we landed. He
made the sign of welcome, but that seemed to
be all we could get out of him. By means of my
small Innuit vocabulary and by gesture we tried
to bring it home to this fellow that we wanted
to know what was the name of his village, how
far it was to the next village, how far it was to
Mamtrelich, how far it was to the Mission.
Had he ever seen or heard of any white men
living below on the river? For all of these ques-
tions he had the same sign — he did not know.
Despairing at last of getting any information
out of this savage, we were pushing off and were

125

already afloat when he suddenly showed a great
command of the Eskimo language. Grabbing
a stick and talking all the time he began to draw
lines on the sand of the shore. Becoming inter-
ested, we landed again and watched him. Fol-
lowing his movements, though not his words,
we soon made out that he was drawing a map
of the river from the point where we stood down
nearly to its mouth. He showed that after fol-
lowing a straight course for some miles the river
doubled back on itself. If we followed it we
would have to go a long distance to get to Mamtre-
lich, which he indicated in its position on the map.
But here was the important point; there was a
short cut. Only about four miles below the point
where we stood he drew two straight lines indi-
cating a canal uniting the two sides of the loop
in the river and cutting off the big bend. In an
instant the whole situation was perfectly clear.
He had evidently understood our signs from the
first and only relented when he saw us going
away disappointed.

Soon after we left him a breeze sprang up and
we put up our sail and when we judged we had
run the distance we watched for the canal and,
sure enough, we soon picked it up, half concealed
by the willows on the bank, and running into
126

it, we lowered the sail. It was a narrow, deep
slough, or natural canal, running almost straight
across the neck of land. In about half an hour
we found ourselves again on the broad river,
having saved ourselves a long journey of many
miles that we would have been obliged to make
had we followed the river, as we certainly would
have done if we had not been so accurately
informed.

At half after six on that day, the first of Sep-
tember, we arrived at the native village of Mam-
trelich, where the Moravian Mission of Bethel is
established under the protection of the Moravian
College at Bethlehem in Pennsylvania. We
found the Mission in charge of Mr. Stecher, who,
with his devoted wife, had been for five years
at this station without having seen the outside
world. They were assisted by two other mis-
sionaries. There was also a small trading store
on the other side of the village opposite the
Mission.

At Bethel, which is near the mouth of the river,
we found to our surprise two of the flat-bottomed
stern-wheel steamers such as are used on the
Yukon. When the report of gold on the Innoko
in the spring had promised to start a stampede
to the Kuskokwim, some one had sent the first

127

of these steamers over into the mouth of the
Kuskokwim from the Yukon with the idea of
doing a thriving business by running up and down
the river from Bethel to the mouth of the Tacotna.
A little later someone else had sent the second
steamer as a rival to the first. But the stampede
was abortive, and there the two rival steamers
lay all summer with nothing to do. Now winter
was coming on and the gales made it unsafe for
them to go out to sea to return to St. Michael.

The missionaries, who showed us every kind-
ness and courtesy, put at our disposal a little
log cabin, where, though there were no beds or
furniture, we managed to be very comfortable.
The weather was now cold, with the temperature,
especially at night, dropping rapidly. We still
had a journey of 500 miles to bring us in touch
with communication to the outside world. That
journey lay along the coast of Bering Sea to
St. Michael and it was our intention to travel
in our canoe and arrive there in time to catch
the last steamer for the "outside." There was
one alternative and that was to return up the
river to the Yukon portage, cross over and come
down the Yukon to St. Michael, which is on an
island at its mouth. We voted against this
alternative and decided to proceed by sea and
128

take our chances with winds and weather. We
proposed to allow ourselves ten days at Mamtre-
lich to assemble collections and take notes and
still be in time to catch the outgoing steamer at
St. Michael. For the purposes mentioned we
visited also a village about two miles farther
down the river on the opposite side, and in both
these villages we were very successful. The
inhabitants were not anxious to trade with us,
but we nevertheless made satisfactory collec-
tions during our stay.

A curious and interesting form of amusement
in which people of all ages indulge is called aihruk
and consists in a kind of play with a string made
of braided sinew. This string is doubled in the
form used in our children's game of cat's cradle
and is employed in much the same way, except
that the process is much longer and the figures
that are developed are much more elaborate.
Indeed, these figures sometimes present an extraor-
dinary elaboration. I was able to collect and
record twelve different figures, each of which
had its name and was supposed to represent some
object. Among the subjects learned and recorded
by me were "the earrings," "the caribou," "the
eyes and mouth," "two squirrels," "the old
woman," "the paddle," "the ears and nose,"

129

"the bear," "the crow's foot," "the throwing
stick." I have sent these to Miss Kathleen
Haddon of Cambridge, England, the author of
"The Cat's Cradle," who informs me that the
"crow's foot" is the same as one from Torres
Straits already recorded.

I found in 1905 similar games but with different
names and different figures along the coast of
Bering Sea between St. Michael and Cape Prince
of Wales, and the practice or invention, if one
may so call it, is very prevalent and very highly
developed among the Western Eskimo generally.
It is, however, an invention that is found among
primitive peoples in all parts of the world and is
absolutely unknown as to its origin or original
significance.*

An old man at Mamtrelich village in develop-
ing some of his more elaborate figures accom-
panied his motions by a kind of incantation or
rhythmical recitation, the words of which, so
far as I could make out, had no meaning. It
appears that some, if not all, of the string figures
of the Eskimo of the Kuskokwim have their
appropriate corresponding verbal formulas which

*See THE CAT'S CRADLE by Kathleen Haddon and
STRING FIGURES FROM MANY LANDS by Caroline
Furness Jayne.

I30

are repeated in time with the motions of the
fingers.

By way of experiment I tried to induce the old
man whom I have mentioned to develop one of
his string figures without the recitation. His
attempt to do so seemed to result in confusion
and he had in each case to begin again and finally
to repeat his formula. I suppose that his state
of mind may have been similar to my own when
I try to find a word in the dictionary, and in order
to do so I have to repeat the whole alphabet to
discover where I am at.

131

CHAPTER VIII
The Lament of the Native

The missionaries told us that the Kuskwog-
amiut are remarkably quick to learn but
very reluctant to give up their ancient customs
and habits of life. They were especially dis-
turbed because these simple and primitive people
insisted on performing every winter their cus-
tomary dances, recitals and dramatic representa-
tions. All this the missionaries objected to and
tried to suppress, and by their methods of inter-
ference had given great offense, as we soon learned
from the natives themselves. At first the Eskimo
were naturally suspicious of our interest, but
they were quick to understand our good inten-
tions and to respond. When they realized that
we sympathized with them in their desire to keep
up the old traditions, they stated their case and
presented their argument with the utmost clear-
ness and logic. Nothing could have been more
intelligent than the way in which they defended
their time-honored customs which to them meant
so much. They showed great intelligence and
fairness in their attitude towards the missionaries,
132

whom they regarded in a sense as their guests
and whom they acknowledged to be good men.
On their own part they claimed the right to live
in harmony among themselves and to promote
their own happiness as their fathers had done and
according to their own customs, for which they
feel a natural respect and veneration.

We, of course, did not see any of the dances
or other performances because they take place in
the winter only, but we had them described to
us. They are much too long and elaborate to be
given here, but I may say that they are in the
nature of festivals which often last several days.
The village that gives the performance invites
all the neighboring villages and even villages at
great distances are included in the invitations
that are sent out. There is a great deal of inter-
change of ideas and experiences, as well as of
commodities. There is much feasting and the
ceremonies and dances are performed in strict
conformity with a well established usage and are
governed by rules of long standing. The rites
attending the celebration of these festivals are
often very elaborate and are performed with
much attention to detail.

As represented to me, it struck me that these
occasions are singularly free from objectionable

133

features of any kind. There is an underlying
religious motive to some of them and all have a
profound social significance. They are not only
diverting but they keep the minds of the popu-
lation of all ages occupied and their wits sharp-
ened and directed towards definite ends for the
common good. They regulate life and afford enter-
tainment for the long winter of indoor life which
would otherwise tend toward idleness with its
inevitable evils and hardships. They also promote
friendly intercourse between the different villages
and stimulate trade relations.

The missionaries, on the other hand, argue
that these native practices, though apparently
harmless, are bound up with their heathendom
generally, that they tend to preserve religious
beliefs and notions about spirits that are not
included in the Christian teaching. For this
reason they feel that the practices must be
stamped out before the people can be reclaimed
from error and converted to the true faith. They
told me themselves that they had gone to the
places of the festivals uninvited at different times
and interfered as far as discretion would permit.
From the natives I heard also of these visits.
They explained that the missionaries knew very
well that going uninvited to a feast was not

134

according to custom and that interference was
an affront. Most bitter of all was the complaint
of the older men and women that the young
people no longer conducted themselves with the
propriety which had always been customary.
They were even becoming disrespectful to their
elders and careless of the old ways and of the
things their people had always considered proper.
This they attributed to the teaching of the
missionaries.

In addition to these complaints I heard again
and repeatedly that sickness had increased and
that new forms of disease had come among them.
They felt that their happiness was slipping away
from them and that demoralization and misery
were encroaching upon their lives as a result of
the white man's presence.

I am not prepared here to discuss the justice
of these complaints. I have no doubt that in
making them the people of the villages were
expressing a very real conviction and that they
have experienced a very real sense of injury.

As a piece of evidence to confirm the state-
ments made about the inroads of disease, I saw
several villages entirely deserted where the houses
were falling upon the bones of the unburied dead.
The missionaries also told us of the sudden and

135

epidemic eruptions of disease that had left whole
villages depopulated, but they attributed the cir-
cumstance to the habits of the natives themselves.

One of the most interesting things about these
villages on the lower Kuskokwim, from a scenic
point of view as well as from other considerations,
are the old cemeteries. I say old cemeteries
because there are two forms of burial, an older
form and a later form. At the present time the
burial custom is the same as that practiced by the
Eskimo of other parts of Alaska. The body is
placed in a rough box and this either rests on
the ground or is supported above it.

In the older form of burial, the grave was dug
in the frozen earth and above it a monument
was erected containing a tablet with an inscrip-
tion in picture writing, and attached to this, a
wooden mask to represent the dead. If the man
be very important a complete statue may take
the place of the mask to represent him. Weapons
and implements used by the dead were fastened
upon the monument and the whole structure was
sometimes ten feet high. All the graves of this
type were old, but how old I could not tell nor
could I get any satisfactory information about
them. Upon one of them was an old Russian
flint-lock gun, which, however, would only be a
136

+

®ih

o

VII- l\ TT

VIII- A ' A7-1J A ' 1

ix- f^A A A

5>0

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PICTURE-WRITING

very rough indication of the age of the grave.
The inscriptions in picture writing had been
painted on the tablets and were in each instance
almost entirely obliterated, a thing that gave me
much regret.

The art of picture-writing is highly developed
among the Kuskwogamiut. There is nothing
that they will not essay in the field of literature
by their skilful handling of this picturesque device.
Among the examples that I was able to collect
are invitations sent to distant villages to come
to a feast, records of hunting, fragments of old
songs and legends, personal narratives and stories
of adventure. Through the kindness of Mr.
Stecker, the missionary, I also obtained copies
of some remarkable documents written by a very
intelligent native who listened to the scripture
readings at the Mission Chapel with great atten-
tion. He wrote down everything he heard in
picture-writing and had thus accumulated a library
of his own. Among the first things he wrote down
was the decalogue. That the reader may see
what the Ten Commandments look like I repro-
duce here a faithful copy.

The author of this document, whose name
deserves to be remembered, though I am sorry
to say I have forgotten it, relying entirely on

137

his own resources, afterwards discovered that he
needed a more rapid method of writing to keep
up with the spirit of the time, and he gradually
developed a system of shorthand by using the
picture writing as a basis. By means of this
discovery he could take down all the lessons and
sermons that he heard and recite them afterwards
without missing anything.

The central feature of each village, as of all
Eskimo villages, is the kozgee, a large house
built mostly underground and big enough to hold
the entire population of the village and in addi-
tion such guests as may be invited to the cere-
monial meetings and dance festivals that always
take place in the kozgee. At all other times it
is the men's house, where all the men of the
village may assemble, and where each has his
appointed seat and sleeping place. From this
club women are excluded except at the dances.
It is there that all the unmarried men sleep.
Married men have been known to sleep there
also.

Another function of the kozgee is that of the
sweat bath in which the men are fond of indulging.
The heavy hewn planks that form the floor are
movable over a square central area. Underneath
this area is a deep pit, directly under the smoke
138

hole in the roof. When the men or any group
of them wish to take a sweat bath they build a
great fire in this pit and in this they place stones
which become red hot. In the meantime great
wooden buckets filled with water are placed in
readiness, and the entrance is tightly closed so
that no air can come in. Each man holds a
cleverly devised respirator in his mouth which he
removes at intervals, as the air becomes more
intensely heated, to drink enormous draughts of
water from the buckets. Finally water is dribbled
continuously on the red hot stones and the smoky
air of the kozgee, already intensely heated,
becomes heavily charged with steam. Perspi-
ration is freely induced and the men rub their
bodies with urine, which, on account of the
ammonia it contains, produces a lather. Finally
the door is opened and all rush out and roll in
the snow in evident delight.

The kozgee, it will be seen, serves many dif-
ferent functions. As a social institution it is
obviously of great importance and worthy of
much study. It is the common property of the
men of the village and its privileges are extended
to the women during those ceremonies and dances
in which all participate.

There are many interesting things which I

139

observed at these villages, but this is not the
place to record them. I learned of many more
things of equal or even greater interest which I
did not observe, both because our short stay of
nine days afforded me small opportunity and
more particularly because the time for making
such observations is the winter season.

The time was at hand when we must resume
our journey and the first difficulty that now
presented itself was how we should transport the
collections we had made which were now too
large to be packed in the canoe. I have already
mentioned the two river steamers which were now
being laid up for the winter. In the spring they
would be going out to the Yukon. We had
decided to leave the bulk of our collection in safe
keeping with the missionaries, who were kind
enough to promise to send them out by one of
these steamers in the spring. However, some-
thing quite unforeseen happened which led to a
change of plan.

A boat appeared one day coming up stream,
driven by a gasoline engine and having on board
three men; the owner, his mate and his engineer.
They had come from Nome on a trading venture
along the coast and before returning had decided
to run up to the Bethel Mission. They were
140

ready to start on the return trip. Here was an
opportunity that changed the outlook and made
it possible to reach Nome and connect there with
the steamer for the outside instead of traveling
to St. Michael in the canoe four hundred miles
along a stormy coast as we had planned. Yet
it took us some time for making our decision.
We were most reluctant, for one thing, to give
up the plan already formed, which promised expe-
riences of a novel and adventurous nature and of
a kind quite different from those afforded by
that part of our journey which we had completed.

Our canoe had served us well on our river
journey and we believed that it would serve us
equally well on the salt water. There were
chances, to be sure, which we were quite aware
of. We felt that we could for the most part
keep close in shore, but we knew that there would
be wide bays and stretches of exposed water to
cross and we might get caught in such a position
in a storm. Moreover, the season of high winds
and equinoctial gales was at hand and we already
had a taste of their quality, but we had expe-
rienced nothing, as yet, to be compared with the
storms we met later. Neither of us wanted to
leave our canoe, and we both wanted to finish
the trip as we began it. On the other hand,

141

neither of us wanted to miss the last steamer
out of Bering Sea. We talked with the owner
of the little trading boat and he was positive
that, as he proposed to stop nowhere on the
return, the journey would not be more than
five days long.

This decided us. We had been allowing fifteen
days for the journey, but there were so many
unknown quantities and so many chances to take
that we realized we might miss the steamer at
St. Michael. We therefore decided to take pas-
sage with the trader in his boat, The Hettie B.
As our troubles began the moment we stepped
aboard this unlucky craft, some description
of her will help to an understanding of what
happened.

142

■

THE AUTHOR ON THE LOWER Kl'SKOKWI.M

CHAPTER IX
Shaking Hands with the Willows

The Hettie B. was about forty feet long and ten
feet of beam with five or six feet of depth. She had
a house over the forward two-thirds of her length
standing two or three feet above the deck. She
had a small mast well forward and carried a small
sail. She had a little gasoline engine and as a part
of her load she carried about thirty cans of gasoline
lashed on deck. In her hold, when we left Bethel,
she had a store of furs and the boxes in which we
had packed our collections. The cargo was
stowed in such a way that it formed a fairly
level surface with about four feet in the clear
between it and the roof of the deck house. It
was so disposed, in other words, that we could
lie down or sit up, but the only place we could
stand upright under the deck house was the after-
part, which was separated from the rest by a
bulkhead and in which the little engine was
installed. Up in the bows was a window with
a small wheel and a compass. A few feet of
space at this forward part were left clear of cargo
to give standing room for the steersman.

H3

We had on board when we left Bethel the
crew of three men, that is to say, the owner, who
was a Norwegian named Houltberg; Herman,
his partner (also a Norwegian), and the engineer,
whom everyone called Sparks though his name
was Bachelder. There were, besides this crew,
five passengers: my brother and I; a Jew named
Block who turned up at the Mission and seemed
to be lost generally (he was working his passage
in the capacity of cook) ; a Finn named Reeth,
who claimed to have discovered gold not far from
the Mission and let it be known that he was
going out to the United States to get capital to
work his mine; Flaherty, an Irishman and captain
of one of the river boats already mentioned; and
a strange Swedish person named Larsen. This
last named adventurer had, a few days before,
made his weird arrival in the most unconventional
craft that I have ever seen. It was simply a
piece of canvas fastened in a very casual way
about some bent willow poles. It resembled
more than anything I can think of a very much
improvised bath tub a little longer one way than
the other, and holding together either by sheer
luck or else by some form of innate perversity
that upsets all theories of matter and flouts the
law of chance. He had floated down the Holik-
144

nuk, according to his story, and the only thing
he carried was a Winchester carbine with the
barrel hacked off about a foot from the lock and
the stock amputated as well. It soon became
evident that he had been "shaking hands with
the willows."

The last expression which I have now had
occasion to use more than once needs some eluci-
dation at this point. It often happens that a
prospector or trapper, wandering off by himself
and penetrating deep into the forest in pursuit
of some fancied El Dorado or some hunter's para-
dise, lives for months and even years without
seeing his fellow men. Some hardy and well
balanced minds can stand it. Others experience
varying degrees of derangement, and in the lan-
guage of the North, such a man is said to have
been shaking hands with the willows. The origin
of the expression, like many phrases that have
enriched our language, is lost in obscurity. Larsen
had been shaking hands with the willows. When
he found that I had a camera he expressed a
desire that I should make a photograph of his
head, because, as he explained, he had n-rays
that proceeded from his forehead and he would
like to see them in a photograph. His explana-
tion of these n-rays was somewhat vague but

H5

sufficiently explicit to claim for himself a certain
infallibility in the pursuit of game. The n-rays
directed him to the animals and held them bound
as by a spell and thus enabled him to walk right
up close to them and shoot them with his gun.
So close was he able to approach a moose, for
instance, that he had found his carbine too long
and that was why he had hacked it off at both
ends.

On September 9th we left Bethel. A few hours
afterwards I asked the captain to put me ashore
to examine a deserted village that I saw on the
bank. It had evidently been abandoned several
years. In the interiors of the falling huts I found
various implements and utensils lying about and
among the general wreckage were scattered the
bones of the people that had died in their homes
with none to bury them. Among the things I
took away were a number of skulls that I col-
lected for scientific use — I mention this only on
account of an incident that happened later.

It was not long after we left this place that
we ran on a bar. We were now in tidal water,
which, ebbing, left us hopelessly stuck. We all
turned in, that is to say, six of us lay lengthwise
on the cargo, taking up all the space afforded
by the width of the boat and lying close. One
146

of our number had room to lie crosswise at the
feet of the six and Sparks curled up in a corner
beside his little engine.

No watch was set, a mistake on the part of the
owner, who was also the skipper. During the
night a stiff gale blew up and when daylight
came we found that the flowing tide had lifted
us from the bar and the wind had driven us
ashore and we were high up among the bushes.
By hard work we succeeded in getting off about
noon. Now it happened that the second river
boat that I have mentioned was anchored a little
farther down, looking apparently for a good
place to lay up for the winter. On the steamer
was a man named Cornelius, a Californian, who
had just recovered from sickness and who was
anxious to get out. He was brought over in the
longboat of the steamer and taken aboard our
little boat as an additional passenger. This made
nine people on our already crowded craft.

We got under way once more, but had hardly
started when the wind got blowing so that we
were compelled to run into a cove and drop our
anchor. In the morning we started again, still
towing the longboat with the intention of drop-
ping it when we passed the steamer to which it
belonged, but this longboat's painter got foul of

147

our propeller, so we dropped anchor again and
tried to clear the propeller, but could not do so.
Then the anchor rope broke and we drifted ashore
on a high tide with a strong wind piling the water
up the bank. The tide went out and next morn-
ing we were high and dry right up among the
willows. We cleared the propeller, recovered
the anchor and tried to get the boat off when
the tide came in. She was stuck so fast in the
mud, however, that we were unable to move her,
so we spent another night among the willows, to
await the next high tide which came about noon
next day. Again we failed and again the tide left
us. On that day, shortly after noon, I told my
brother I was going to have a look at the country
that lay behind the willows. He was for going
with me, but I thought it better that one of us
should stay by the boat. Then Sparks volun-
teered to go with me. I took a pocket compass
and a shotgun. A hundred yards from the bank
the ground fell away, became very soft, and we
struck across an oozy mass of rank moss satu-
rated with water, so that we sank to our knees,
an aggravated form of niggerhead and muskeg.
At the same time the willows ended and a per-
fectly flat tundra bare of bushes stretched to the
far horizon, with numerous miniature lakes and
148

ponds in every direction. I took a compass
bearing and followed it, with only such deviations
as were required to avoid the water. Under
foot it still continued soft for the most part,
though there were stretches of firmer ground.
In spite of this condition we were able to make
good progress. In about two hours we came
to a fairly large lake where we saw some geese,
but they kept well out of reach and there was
no way of making cover. We kept on for another
hour and saw some ducks on a pond, shot two
and waited for them to drift ashore. Then, as
we were about to start back, we saw that the
distant horizon was blotted out and a dense fog
bank came rolling across the level tundra. With-
out a fog we had absolutely no means except the
compass to indicate the direction or to guide us
on the level and confusing mixture of oozy land
and still water. The only difference made by
the fog that soon enveloped us with its cold grey
mantle was that it made it difficult, while shaping
our course by the compass, to avoid the standing
water which in places had the dimensions of
small lakes. Sparks was a little man, and though
he did his best with his legs, I had frequently to
retard my pace or wait for him to come up before
he became obliterated in the fog. Finally it got

149

so dark that in order to see the compass I had
to light a match from time to time. It occurred
to me that to get lost on that tundra and have
to spend the night would be excessively uncom-
fortable; there was nothing with which to make
a fire and there was no place dry enough to lie
down. In fact, if we lay on the wet moss the
water would ooze up round us. It was some
relief when we struck the willows again and the
elevated rim of the river that afforded firm footing.
A little later we came out on the river bank right
on top of the boat. By luck and close attention
to the compass, we had directed our course straight
for our starting point in spite of the numerous
deflections owing to the confusing ponds. Sparks
made a long and, to do him justice, a thrilling
story of our adventure for the general entertain-
ment. He stated with emphasis that I had
walked his dam'd legs off, that he never expected
to see the dam'd boat again and that he would
undergo a similar engineering operation if he
knew how I had found my way back. Whatever
I might have felt about the rest of his story, I
was entirely of his mind about the conclusion;
but I did not think it necessary to let this be
known. We stewed the ducks and found them so
fishy that they had to be rejected, which was a

150

sad blow to our pride, especially for Sparks, who
had had a good deal to say about our knowledge
of game and our skill as sportsmen.

Next morning my brother took the longboat
down to the steamer and borrowed some tools
in order to get us afloat. He soon returned with
some picks and shovels. With these he put us
ail to work digging a deep canal from the bow
of the boat (she had gone up the bank stern
first) out across the tide flats to deeper water.
When the tide came in later in the day we were
able to float her out through this canal. Other-
wise I suppose we might be there still.

We now started out afresh in good weather
and soon passed the steamer, which still had her
captain aboard, and left the longboat. The river
soon widened into an estuary some miles in width.
In the evening we were about five miles off the
large Eskimo village of Quinhagak; we ran on
a bar in a rapidly falling tide and got stuck.
At this place there was a branch of the Bethel
Mission. Next morning when the tide was high
we floated off and ran towards the village. When
we were half a mile off we again got on a bar.
When the tide went out it left us dry and we
could walk to the village.

Getting on this last bar was a piece of good

IS'

fortune to which in all probability we owed our
lives. It was a sand-bar and as the boat lay
over on her side we could examine her keel and
all of her joints. We found that the heavy iron
shoe that was spiked to the keel at the stern and
that supported the rudder, had come loose. If
we had gone to sea without discovering this con-
dition and repairing it, we could easily have lost
our rudder in the first rough sea we struck. It
took us two days to make these repairs. This
gave me time to visit the village and make the
acquaintance of the natives as well as of the
missionary, Mr. Schoechert, an energetic and
intelligent man, who, with his wife, were most
kind and helpful.

The tundra about Quinhagak is somewhat higher
and drier than many parts I had seen. During
my walks of the two days spent there, I had had
opportunities of observing it. I do not think
that there can be anything on earth more forlorn
and desolate than the tundra. It is level like
the sea and has just enough undulation to sug-
gest waves; one catches a glint that suggests
water at intervals on the skyline; there is every-
where a rank smell, and all around is moss. Such
a description sounds like the end of desolation
and monotony, and yet when I looked over that
152

wide stretch of tundra at Quinhagak, I was aware
that it had a beauty and fascination of its own.
It was September and the different mosses were
all different colors, soft reds and yellows and
browns and greys. In that blending of color
consisted the beauty of the tundra in September.

On Sunday, the 15th of September, we were
off again, this time heading right out to sea with
Nunivak Island on our starboard and a bold
promontory called Cape Newenham on our port.
As night came on it came up to blow, the sea
became rough and the engine got working very
badly. We put up the sail and shaped a course
to clear the island and the shoals and to get well
out to deep water where we could shape a straight
course to Nome.

Night came on pitch dark, the wind blew harder,
the sea became rougher, we were tossed about
and the engine stopped working altogether. We
did the best we could with the sail, steering by
the compass, and trying to work out to sea and
clear the land and possible rocks and shoals.
We passed a rough night and when morning came
we found ourselves abreast of Nunivak Island,
having drifted all night. We had been steering
a straight course well up in the wind and we
had been carried rapidly by wind and current

153

nearly at right angles to our course and were
nearly thrown on the land. Houltberg picked
out a cove on the coast of Nunivak Island and
in running for its shelter narrowly escaped a
sunken rock. It was Flaherty who saw the dan-
ger and swung the boat just in time to save it.
The island is rocky and has one considerable
elevation which, after the tundra, might properly
be called a mountain. Mac and I climbed this
and from its top surveyed practically the whole
island. We could see no inhabitants, though on
our way we saw an old ruined village of con-
siderable size.

154

CHAPTER X
Adrift on Bering Sea

We filled the water cask from a spring and
started out to sea in the afternoon, the weather
having moderated and Sparks having satisfied
himself that his engine could be persuaded to
work. During the rest of that day and all that
night things went well enough. Next day, how-
ever, the wind rose. It blew from the southeast
and before noon a storm was raging. The engines
stopped working altogether and even before they
quit we were making no headway, for the pro-
peller was half the time out of the water, and
even with the help of the sail she got no steerage
way. The boat lay in the trough, broadside to
the seas. If she had not been a very stout boat
she must have gone to pieces. Each time that
she dropped into the trough and the next great
wave hung above her with its crest torn by the
wind, it seemed that the sea was about to fall
on top of her, but each time she rose, broadside,
reeling and tossing to be sure, but giving a remark-
able account of herself in a heavy sea.

For four days and four nights the storm blew

155

without any intermission. Meanwhile, we were
drifting far out into Bering Sea, perfectly helpless.

Now, to the general discomfort, there was added
an unpleasant incident that illustrated a dismal
side of human nature — superstitious fear. No
objection had been made to the Eskimo skulls
when they were brought aboard. However, on
the day we left Quinhagak, Larsen, the man with
the n-rays in his head, who had been shaking
hands with the willows, announced his decision
not to trust himself at sea in company with those
skulls. He therefore left the boat and predicted
that we would all be drowned in Bering Sea.
This suggestion of a crazy man was enough to
disturb the weaker minds. They had evidently
dwelt upon it in secret until they became con-
vinced that the skulls of dead Eskimo in the
bottom of the hold were the cause of our bad
luck. It came out suddenly from Cornelius, the
Californiaji, who was supported by Reeth, the
Finn, and Block, the Jew. Flaherty, the Irish
sailorman, was probably not without some super-
stition of his own, but he could not abide the
Jew and if he was going to be drowned he would
take care at least that he would not be caught
in that kind of company.

From the start there had been a feud between

IS6

these two. Without giving any special cause for
offense so far as I was aware, Block was the
object and the victim of Flaherty's open and
undisguised hostility. The Irishman had promptly
invented a name for the Jew which, whatever
merits it may have had otherwise, was open to
the objection that it is unprintable. The Jew
on his part retaliated, less aggressively to be sure,
but with just enough spirit to keep the Irishman
occupied.

Now when Block added his voice to the dark
counsel of fear and superstition, Flaherty found
in this act a new cause for offense which he resented
in the most vigorous manner, and with great
volubility. He did not offer any opinion on the
merits of the case. The attack which he launched
was directed in the broadest and most impartial
way against the physical, mental and moral qual-
ities generally of the unfortunate Block, who had
neither the size, courage nor facility of speech
requisite for effective retaliation.

When this diversion had subsided the subject
of the skulls was soon resumed, chiefly by Cor-
nelius, seconded by Reeth. These men were not
only serious but were becoming desperately in
earnest as the storm became fiercer and our
plight apparently more hopeless. I thought it

157

wisest to make light of the matter, but the thing
would not down; it kept reviving until it was
easy to see that the minds of all were becoming
affected by the same thought and fear. It was
becoming awkward and I did not know how it
would end if the storm kept up for many days.
Mac and I, by way of privacy, lay on one occa-
sion face down along the roof of the deck house,
maintaining our position by clinging to the cleats
and their lashings while the seas broke over us.
I confided to my brother that I should have
objections to being made to play the part of
Jonah. He replied that he felt it would be
exceedingly awkward in the circumstances, because
there were very few whales left in Bering Sea
owing to the activity of the whaling industry.

We then took advantage of an opportunity and
took the skipper into our confidence. I told him
that I was quite ready to put the bones over-
board if in his judgment the occasion demanded it.
Houltberg replied that the cargo of the boat was
entirely in his charge and he would take care of
it. He then took Flaherty into the council, and
he gave his word that he could be counted on in
the event of any trouble. When the next word
was said on the subject of the skulls the skipper
announced that he was tired of hearing nonsense
158

which required several qualifying phrases. More-
over, this boat belonged to him, he was in charge
of the damned outfit and he would see it all in
hell before he would listen any longer to the talk
of the people who had evidently been shaking
hands with the willows. He was thoroughly in
earnest and his manner of speaking had the right
effect, for the subject of the skulls never came
up again.

On the fifth day the storm abated and a heavy
swell followed the subsidence of the huge waves
that had tossed and pounded us for five days.
After much persuasion the little engine was
started going and we struggled along slowly and
laboriously on the swell. The compass had
been smashed by a sea that carried away the
stout sash in front of the binnacle. The course
steered was arrived at by guesswork and by the
position of the sun. It was impossible to tell
how far we might have drifted during the five
days of storm and therefore our position was
indeterminate. That night the boat was steered
by the pole star which, attended by the dipper,
hung high in the heavens. In the morning what
appeared to be a long low coast line lay on our
port, that is, to the northwest. The appearance
of land in that direction was a surprise, for it

159

would indicate that we had drifted at least as
far as St. Lawrence Island, or perhaps even as
far as the Siberian shore. As the sun rose the
features of the coast stood out clearly and dis-
tinctly, apparently about three miles away. We
changed our course and ran towards it. We
continued on this course without apparently get-
ting any nearer land and concluded that owing
to some atmospheric condition we had miscalcu-
lated the distance. There lay the land as plain
as could be and still the same distance away as
when first seen. It was uncanny. Suddenly the
landscape broke up and vanished into nothing
and we knew that we had been deceived by a
mirage.

By noon on that day, September the 25th, it
began to blow once more from the southwest,
and by night the storm was upon us again with
greater violence than ever. Again the engine
stopped and again we lay broadside to the seas
that walloped us unmercifully. The rations now
began to run short. We had left still some
smoked salmon, some ship's biscuit, some beans
and a little coffee. Worst of all, our cask of
water was getting low. Each man was now
allowed a small piece of salmon, one ship's biscuit
and a cup of weak coffee in the morning and the
160

same at night with the addition of a few boiled
beans. In the middle of the day each of us
had a cup of water. From the constant batter-
ing, several seams about the waterline were open-
ing and admitting the sea. This we were able
to stop by constant and repeated calking on the
inside.

This storm lasted four days and when it was
over we had finished all our provisions except a
few beans. Worse still, we had used up all the
water. Everyone had become very much de-
pressed during these days. Even Flaherty and
Block forgot their animosity to the extent at
least of ignoring each other's existence, and that
was something of an achievement, considering
that in our cramped quarters they could not
avoid physical contact. The fresh water was
gone, and the handful of beans, the last remnant
of our provisions, were raw. Block, in his capacity
of cook, undertook to boil them in sea water.
The longer he boiled them, the harder they got,
and when he got through they were like small
pebbles.

I cannot remember that we suffered very severely
on account of the lack of food. The want of
water was more serious, but that was not so bad
as it might have been. Our clothes were damp

161

all the time and the weather was growing cold.
On the last day the spray began to freeze. We
were so hardened that we felt the cold remarkably
little.

On the morning of the 29th of September the
gale had blown itself out and we ran all that day
and night and all of the following day in the direc-
tion which we supposed would take us to Nome
or some adjacent part of the Alaskan coast.
On the morning of the 1st of October we saw
land ahead and early on that day we ran into
a bay under the lee of a high rocky promontory.
This, by studying a chart that we had on board,
we soon recognized as Cape Darby on the East
of Golovin Bay in Norton Sound and we were
still a long way from Nome. All day we ran along
the coast westward in fair weather. Near mid-
night we rounded a high cape and saw right ahead
the lights of Nome. They were electric lights at
that. High above the rest there stood out a
flaming cross. In the absence of a lighthouse
the Roman Catholic Church at Nome had erected
a large wooden cross on top of the spire and
illuminated it with electric lights to guide ships
approaching the shore at night. We were just
twenty-two days from Bethel and five days had
been allowed for the journey. We found that
162

the last steamer was very late and we had two
weeks to wait at Nome. It was now freezing
hard and ice was forming inshore. We spent
the time comfortably enough at getting cleaned
up and eating everything in sight to make up
for our short rations on The Hettie B.

I have forgotten the name of the steamer that
made the last trip that season from Nome to
Seattle, but she was, I believe, lost in the fol-
lowing year off Puget Sound. Our voyage from
Nome to Seattle took twelve days and it was a
rough passage. The captain was sick and the
ship was in charge of the first officer. We arrived
at Puget Sound by night in a thick fog. The
next morning the fog still hung heavy and the
engines were stopped. After the fog lifted a bit
we began to go ahead. The mate lost his reckon-
ing and as the fog cleared, he hailed a tug boat
and found that he had turned completely about
and was running in the wrong direction. The
captain died that day, before we reached the
pier.

It had been a rough voyage in every way, the
crew were rough and, in the absence of the cap-
tain's authority, were in a state of half mutiny;
the food was rough and in the middle of the
voyage the cook went on a strike and we were

163

served with cold things out of tins. After two
days in irons the cook decided to go back to
work. Then there was a row among a crowd of
gamblers in the smoking room. It became so
bad that the mate tried to interfere, only to find
himself in danger, for they threatened to put him
overboard, and he could not trust his vile rabble
of a crew.

It was settled after a while without bloodshed,
but the game went on with frequent outbreaks
until we reached Seattle. We were glad to get
off that boat. Indeed, from the time we reached
Bethel at the mouth of the Kuskokwim till we
reached Seattle, and for that matter for a long
time afterwards we never ceased to long for our
good canoe that we had built ourselves and in
which we had passed so many good and agree-
able days, and which had carried us a thousand
miles across a country that was still a wilderness.

The pleasure that is derived from such an
excursion as I have described, or from any journey
that brings one into close contact with the wilds,
is the most lasting in human experience, for as
time goes on memory adheres with affection to
each favored event, dismissing all the hard, un-
welcome facts, translating the discomforts into
positive enjoyment and turning her countenance
164

away from all disturbing details. This soothing
trick of the mind in deleting from its tablets each
jarring record and inscribing the rest in purple
and gold, is known only to men who have hit
the lonely trails. It does not hold in everyday
life and it may not be invoked by any conscious
effort. It is a solace that Nature prescribes
through some sweet influence of her own for
those who, escaping from the tyrannical toils of
city life, seek comfort in her rough ways.

Every man who has tried it knows that camp
life is the best, but not all have lived it, as I
have done, under the best conditions. To be
at its best, camp life must be shared by two
men and no more. To be at its best there must
be, between these two, the perfect mutual faith
that removes not only mountains but mole hills,
and that, while distinguishing the separate and
independent personality of each, enables them
to act together as one. These two may be
brothers or they may come from the ends of
the earth, but when the occasion arrives, each
is ready to give his life for the other as a matter
of course. No matter what difficulties may be
encountered or what hardships endured, camp life
under these conditions is the best life there is.

Having known it, therefore, at its best on many

165

proven trails, the two men whose life in camp
during one brief Alaskan summer is recorded
here, turned again with each succeeding year
more longingly to their abandoned fires on the
sand-bars and in the swamps along the lonely
rivers of the North. Forgotten were the dis-
comforts, forgotten the weariness, the exposure,
the hunger and the thirst— they remembered the
glittering pageant of glorified days and the deep
enfolding shadows of the magic nights; they
remembered the healing labor, the well earned
rest, the close companionship and the sound,
dreamless sleep.

The years that have passed since then are filled
with great and terrible events and the world has
been so changed that the simple pleasures of the
time that was are like a gorgeous dream, a happy
"vision of fulfilled desire." There is a certain
cold and melancholy comfort in the act of writ-
ing them down to prove that they were once a
reality.

1 66

canoe construction; kelson, stem and stern posts and sheer
stakes in position. temporary supports in the center

CANOE CONSTRUCTION; DIAGRAM ILLUSTRATING DETAILS OF THE
FINISHED CANOE

CANOE CONSTRUCTION; DIAGRAM SHOWING THE RIBS IN POSITION

APPENDIX A

Canoe Construction

For readers who may be interested and who may
have occasion to build a canoe under similar cir-
cumstances, I give here the details of construction
for the canoe which we built at Fairbanks.

Our first step was to go into the woods and
select two dead spruce trees about five inches in
diameter, with a spring at the bottom terminating
in a stout root leading to one side. These, being
dug out of the ground and the lower section of the
trunk cut off, furnished the stem and the stern.
Each of us selected one tree trunk and we worked
over them till we had them hewn to the proper
size and shape. The next step was to procure the
ribs, and having located the dump where the min-
ing town disposed of its refuse, we stripped the
hoops from a number of empty flour barrels,
trimmed them up a bit and the ribs were ready.

In exactly seven days from the time we started
to assemble our materials, the canoe was ready for
launching. The building of it was simple enough
and the essential steps in this process were as
follows. The length of the canoe was to be twenty
feet. The stem and the stern posts which we

167

hewed out of the tree trunks were fitted to the ends
of a kelson and spiked firmly down. The two
strips to form the sheer strakes were fitted flush
to these at the proper height and given their
proper spread in the center to make the width of
the canoe. To depress the center and give the
sides of the canoe a proper sheer, it was only-
necessary to fasten a temporary crosspiece between
them, and to insert another temporary fixture
cut to the proper height between this crosspiece
and the kelson. These two temporary supports
fixed the width at the center and held the sheer
strakes in their doubly bent position while the
canoe was being built.

The next step was to put the ribs in position.
The barrel hoops were soaked in water to make
them more pliable. The center ribs were put in
place first. They were slipped under the kelson
five inches apart and the ends brought up outside
the sheer strakes, to which they were lightly
tacked. All the other ribs were put in position
in the same way five inches apart. The adjust-
ing of the ribs to a proper length and curve was
the task which required some pains, for upon this
the regularity and trimness of her lines would
depend. We were building a canoe that would
not only stand any kind of water that might be
168

encountered on the rivers, but that would be fit
for sea work as well.

We had selected some dry spruce timber free
from knots and at the sawmill we had these sawed
up into quarter inch boards about four inches
wide. To fit these boards to the ribs and fasten
each piece firmly in its place to form the inner
skin of the canoe was the most exacting part of
our work. We cut and shaped each piece to fit
its particular place on the bottom and sides, and
each strip was made to overlap completely the
stem and stern, to which all were fastened, as
well as to the ribs, with copper tacks. Any
irregularities about the seams were afterwards
planed off to make a smooth and even surface for
the canvas that was to form the outer skin.

Stretching the canvas over this inner skin of
thin planks was an operation requiring some care,
since it must fit snugly at all points and be water-
tight.

With the canoe in an inverted position, raised
about two feet from the ground, we spread the
sheet of canvas over it, and working one at each
side seized the two edges at the exact center and
drew it taut. While it was held firmly in this
position each fastened his point with a copper
tack to the sheer strake. Seizing each side again

169

a few inches from the first tack we stretched the
canvas again and tacked another point. In this
way we worked in both directions from the center
towards the ends. After proceeding about one-
third way in either direction from the center, it
was no longer possible to draw the canvas taut
without making folds, owing to the narrowing
body of the canoe. Therefore we let the increasing
slack take care of itself until we had tacked the
edges to the sheer strakes from end to end. That
being done the slack was taken up by splitting
the canvas along the bottom line for one-third the
distance from each end, cutting out a long narrow
V shaped piece and bringing the edges together
along the center line. These edges having been
tacked down, we had a snug fitting canvas skin
covering the entire canoe.

At the ends the canvas was turned in front of
the stem and stern, the edges brought together
and fastened by two rows of tacks. These edges
had to be pitched, but there remained the finishing
of the gunwales where the canvas was as yet only
tacked on the outside.

Turning the canoe right side up, we folded the
slack edge of the canvas completely over the sheer
strakes and securely fastened it down by a row of
copper tacks on the inside. To protect the canvas
170

canoe construction; diagram showing the planks in
position

canoe construction; diagram showing the canvas skin, the
gunwales, the flat keel and the finished bow

at this point, and stiffen the sides, we bent a pair
of gunwales and fastened them securely to the out-
side of the sheer strakes.

After that we boiled rosin with tallow in a
frying pan over a fire and pitched the seams in the
canvas at the bottom and at the ends. We also
added a keel, a strip of spruce three-quarters of an
inch thick and four inches wide, laid flat and nailed
firmly through the canvas and inner skin into the
kelson. This was very important as a protection
for the canvas when the canoe scraped over rocks
or was dragged up the beach.

The ends were still unfinished and to make them
as they should be, both as a protection to the
canvas and to give them a sharp finish, we went
again to the woods and each cut out a section from
the trunks of a pair of small spruce trees with
springing roots. These we hewed down with the
axes and shaped to the curving ends of the canoe,
where they were securely fastened by nails driven
into the stem and stern posts.

A pair of strips three-quarters of an inch thick
and an inch and a half wide were placed against
the ribs on the inside six inches from the top and
running the whole length on either side. The
purpose of these was both to stiffen the structure
and to give a rest for the thwarts. Three thwarts

171

were inserted and these were made of dried spruce
seven-eighths of an inch thick and eight inches
wide.

A stout cross piece was inserted near the bow,
flush with the gunwales, and bored through at
the center. Directly below this a block was
fastened securely to the kelson and in this a socket
was cut. The purpose of this arrangement was to
enable us to step a mast if we ever had an oppor-
tunity of using a sail, for we made a sprit sail of
light canvas. A little flush deck about eighteen
inches long was built in the stern to serve as a
seat for the steersman, and a pair of planks were
fitted in the bottom at either side of the kelson
to receive the weight of the cargo and protect it
from any water which we might chance to ship.

The outside was given three coats of paint and
our canoe was ready for launching. From the
time that we began to assemble the materials
till the last coat of paint was laid was just seven
days. We had a canoe in which we could go any-
where. It weighed 180 pounds and it was entirely
the work of our own hands, which added greatly
to our pleasure and satisfaction.

Table of Distances
During the journey between Fairbanks on the
172

Tanana and the mouth of the Kuskokwim we kept
an accurate record of the run each day. On the
basis of these runs, taken in connection with the
currents in the rivers, the distances were estimated.
Between Fairbanks and the mouth of the
Kantishna, running with the current, our rate of
travel was about five miles an hour. From the
mouth of the Kantishna to its fork we traveled
against the current at about one and a half miles
per hour. From the fork to Lake Minchumina
our rate was reckoned at two miles per hour.
From the Portage to the mouth of the Kuskokwim
our rate averaged five miles an hour on the differ-
ent stretches of the river. According to these
calculations the distances were as follows.

Hours Miles

Fairbanks to the Kantishna 27 135

The mouth of the Kantishna to its

fork 101J 152

Kantishna Fork to Lake Min-
chumina 37 74

Distance across Lake Minchumina . . 12

The Portage 10

From the Portage to the Upper

Istna mouth 60 300

Upper Istna mouth to the Keklone 6 30

Upper Istna mouth to the Tacotna i6| 82

173

Hours Miles
Upper Istna mouth to the Holik-

nuk 46 230

From the Holiknuk to Kolmakoff. 18J 92

From Kolmakoff to Ogovik n 55

From Ogovik to Mamtrelich i8| 92

1,264

Following is the journal kept from day to day.

June 26. Left Fairbanks in canoe at 4 p. m.
Camped 10 miles below Chenoa.
Made 4 hours.

27. Camped just below Nenana. Very

wet. Made 8 hours.

28. Started at noon. Thunder storm came

up. Camped at 5 p. m. Made 5
hours.

29. Broke camp at 9. Passed Tolovana at

7 p. m. Camped on bar at mouth of
Kantishna at 8.30. Made 11 hours.
3c. Cut poles for poling up stream. Mos-
quitoes very bad. Windy. Sparks
caught in mosquito tent, which nearly
burnt up. Able to repair damages
all right. Broke camp at 1 p. m.
and traveled till 6. Current about

174

3i miles per hour. Stopped one hour
for lunch. Made 4 hours.
July 1. Broke camp at 11. Camped at 7.30.
Stopped one hour for lunch. Made

7 J hours.

2. Broke camp at 9.20. Stopped one hour

for lunch and camped 6.20. Made

8 hours.

3. Broke camp at 10.30. Stopped one

hour for lunch and camped at 7.30.
Made 8 hours.

4. Broke camp at 10.30. Stopped 1 hour

for lunch and camped at 5.30. Made
6 hours.

5. Broke camp at 10.20. 1 hour for lunch

and camped at 5.30. At noon we
passed the mouth of the Toklat. The
few Indians camped here are all
down at Tanana. Made 6 hours.

6. Broke camp at 1.15. Stopped for

lunch at 4.45 and started at 5.45.
Camped at 8.30. Made 6\ hours.

7. Went hunting. Saw no game except a

few ducks. There are many tracks
of moose on the bars, but they seem
to have gone back into the hills to
avoid flies. Bear tracks on bars.

175

July 8. Broke camp at 9.15. Stopped 1 hour
for lunch. Camped at 6.15. Made
8 hours.
9. Broke camp at 9.45. Stopped 2 hours
for lunch and rested half hour in
afternoon. Camped at 7. Made
7j hours.

10. Broke camp at 10.15 and camped at

7, having stopped 2J hours. Passed
the Bear Paw at 4.30. Made 6J
hours.

11. Broke camp at 12.15. Camped at 8,

having stopped ij hours for lunch.
Made 6\ hours.

12. Feet have become blistered on top from

going barefoot in sun and cold water.
Stayed in camp.

13. Broke camp at 9. Stopped at 7.15,

having run altogether 8J hours.

14. Broke camp at 10. Stopped 7.45,

having run 7} hours.

15. Wet and feet sore. Stayed in camp

till 3.13. Broke camp and went on
if hours and came to deserted town
of Roosevelt; entered the best house
and camped there.

16. Very wet. Stayed in camp.
176

July 17. Very wet. Stayed in camp.

18. Left at 11 and encountered very swift

water. Poled five hours and made
camp. Denali looms very large and
splendid right ahead, free from clouds
and white from base to summit.
It rises from a low level country
which emphasizes its height.

19. Left camp at 11.45. Poled 2 J hours and

stopped for lunch. Poled f hour and
reached the fork of river. The left
fork is very swift and muddy with
glacial silt from the high snow cov-
ered mountains to the south. Denali
looms very big and looks about 30 m.
away, white from base to summit.
The right fork is slack water and
more clear. We followed the right
fork, which is the Kantishna proper,
and changed from poles to paddles
on account of slack water which
permits of paddles. Camped two
hours above fork. Made \\ hours.

20. Broke camp at 10.30. Passed Birch

Creek in 1 hour. It comes in from
the left and is clear water and more
swift than Kantishna, which now

177

becomes very slack. A deserted
Indian cabin at mouth of Birch
Creek. Traveled till 8 p. m. and
camped in bush. There are no longer
any sand-bars — clay banks with wil-
low and alder and birch. Made
8J hours.
July 21. Broke camp at u. In 2 hours we came
to a good duck pond on left. Shot
three mallard and 1 widgeon. Went
on J hour more and stopped for 2
hours for lunch. Paddled till mid-
night. Made about 10 hours.

22. Broke camp at 2 p. m. Stopped ij

hours for lunch and paddled till mid-
night. Camped on muddy bank in
tall grass. Banks now very low and
muddy. Whole country very flat —
full of ponds, full of game. Made
8 hours.

23. Broke camp at 2, and camped at mid-

night. Made 7 hours.

24. Broke camp at 3.15. Shot one goose

today, ducks in plenty. Reached
lake at 7 p. m. Made 3J hours. At
outlet of lake a muddy stream comes
in on left from glaciers on the moun-

178

tains. This is the stream that carries
silt into Kantishna. Once into the
lake the water is clear. Camped on
right bank. Made 3 J hours.

July 25. Paddled across lake and climbed a
bluff, from which we could see a
thin column of smoke on west shore,
crossed in heavy shower and found
Indian camp, 2 men, Luke and John,
with three women and two chil-
dren ; all other Indians away hunting.
Made presents and camped on point
some distance south from Indians.
26. Indians came and brought presents of
moose meat and white fish. Denali
bears S.from lake covered with clouds.
27-31. During these days we explored the
borders of the lake and Kwalana
River, made maps, traded and talked
with the Indians. Weather very
fine. Skies usually clear with light
breezes and occasional high winds.

Aug. 1. Crossed head of lake to portage, accom-
panied by the two Indians and 7 dogs.
Carried all but canoe 2 miles to a
small lake. Camped. Pond about

\ mile across.

179

Aug. 2. Indians returned home during night
with dogs. We carried the canoe to
the small lake and went across with
2 small packs to find the portage
on other side. Found trail and went on
with packs 4 miles. Returned to camp.

3. Passed all over pond and carried all

but camp outfit i\ miles higher up
to dryer ground, 2 trips.

4. Packed camp and outfit in two packs

weighing about 95 pounds each,
packed these on 4 miles to first cache.
First mile of portage very soft ground,
niggerhead and muskeg, then low
hill, then soft ground and water,
another low hill and soft ground,
another low hill. First cache on
near side of this last low hill.

5. Brought rest of outfit to camp — first

cache.

6. Packed all but tent and sleeping outfit

and canoe down to the banks of
Kuskokwim.

7. Finished portaging and pitched camp

on bank of Kuskokwim.
The portage is 10 miles in all. The
first two miles between the big lake

180

and small lake is very soft and wet.
The rest is similar at intervals be-
tween the hills. We made 7 packs
averaging 95 lbs. each besides canoe,
which weighs 180 lbs. The Kus-
kokwim at this point is a small
stream of clear slack water. Current
about i| miles per hour.
Aug. 8. Started down the Kuskokwim at 8.30.
Shot 5 geese. Lunched on a sand-
bar in shower. In the afternoon a
very heavy rain. Storm came up,
the rain falling continuously in great
quantities and nearly filling the
canoe. In the middle of the storm
we entered the first rapid and as we
shot down, a loud peal of thunder
caused some confusion of sound as
it mingled with the noise made by
the water. It was the first peal of
thunder we heard since the day after
leaving Fairbanks and as it mingled
with the other noise it produced a
curious effect. We became thor-
oughly wet by the rain. Shot two
more rapids and some time after-
wards, the rain still continuing, we

181

saw a deserted cabin on the right
bank and we stopped there at 6.30.
Made stove out of old tin cans and
dried out things. Made 10 hours.
Aug. 9. Rain continued. Stayed in camp.

10. Traveled 9 hours and passed four
more rapids. Passed Indian encamp-
ment on left bank. Three huts.
One old man in encampment. Others
all away for the hunting.

n. Traveled 12 hours.

12. Traveled 4 hours and met 2 men in
2 boats. One had spent the winter
alone trapping on the Tacotna.
The other had spent three years
alone on the upper South Fork.
He had floated down in the spring
and met the other coming up; both
were trappers and they made a
partnership to go to the upper Kus-
kokwim for next winter's trapping.
Wanted to know the date. Half an
hour later we came to a stream on the
left which brings in a great deal of
silt from the glaciers and is swift.
From this point we saw Denali
E.S.E. Made 10 hours.
182

Aug. 13. Started at 7.30. Lunched at 11.30.
Stopped at 10.15. Made 11J hours.

14. Started 10. Camped 9. Made 9

hours.

15. Started 6.30. Traveled 3 hours to the

East Fork (Chedotlotna) and 1 hour
later had lunch, if hours after-
wards came to the upper outlet of
South Fork (Istna), which splits in
two, these mouths being J mile
apart. In three hours more we
arrived at the lower outlet of the
Istna, where we met an Indian in a
canoe. Made 11J hours and camped
at a large tributary coming in on the
left. Here we found 2 Indians who
have a small trading post.

16. Made 9J hours.

17. In one hour came to the Tacotna on

right. Here is a small trading post
established in the spring. Also some
tents of prospectors on their way
up to the Innoko across the divide
between the Kuskokwim and the
Yukon. Gold discovered on Innoko
this spring. Made 4 hours.

18. Wet. Left camp at 10. Passed Indian

183

family in tent. Woman sick. Later
passed Indian village, nearly all sick.
Made 6\ hours.
Aug. 20. Started at 8. Came on very wet.
Ran 4 hours. Camped below an
Indian village.

21. Made 6 hours and arrived at mouth of

Holiknuk River, where the Sikmiut
Indiana have their village. Received
by Chief.

22. Stayed in the Sikmiut village, picked

up some specimens, made photos
and measurements, about 60 people
in village. Secured many notes
and some linguistic material.

23. Continued as yesterday.

24. Started at 1 o'clock. Wind fair.

Stopped to cut mast and rig sail.
Wind died out. Arrived at another
Indian village at 5.30. Camped.
Made 4J hours.

25. Started at 8. Made 10 hours. Sailed

when we could get fair wind.

26. Passed Kolmakoff. Made 8 hours.

27. Passed Ohagamiut and camped 10 miles

below Yukon portage and about 1 mile
below the village of Ogovik. 7 hours.
184

Aug. 28. Strong head wind. Visited village of
Ogovik, and started at noon. After
rounding a bend the wind came fair
and we sailed till 7. Wind fresh and
we found a snug camping place by
good luck. Made 6 hours.

29. Blew gale from west all day, with heavy

showers holding us in camp.

30. Still wet and windy, but wind is fair

and we ventured out under sail.
Soon found we could not carry all
the sail and we ran under a bank and
put in a reef. Wind kept freshen-
ing. River wide and full of bad
bars. After 2 hours' sailing wind
freshened more, water rough, rising
wind headed us off and we were
forced to run for shelter into a
slough on left bank. Camped on
bank of slough. Made 3 hours.

31. Blew gale with rain all day. Stayed

in camp.
Sept. 1. Weather fair. Started at 8 and reached
Mamtrelich at 6.30. Made gi hours.

185

APPENDIX B
The Population of Northern Alaska

The Minkhotana

In a country with so large an area and so
diversified a surface it is natural to find different
types of aboriginal inhabitants. Leaving out
the Aleutian Islands, which are properly classed
ethnologically with Alaska, the inhabitants of
the territory represent three distinct ethnic groups
distinguished on physical lines, in elements of
culture and in language. In all these respects
they differ greatly from each other. Of these
three groups, one is confined to the southeastern
coast strip and the adjacent islands and its mem-
bers are known as the Tlingit and the Haida.
With these people, who occupy a world quite
different from the Alaska in which we traveled,
we are not concerned in this article. The people
with whom we came in contact were members
of the Tinneh family and members of the Eskimo
or Innuit family.

The great central area is occupied by tribes
1 86

who, in their own dialects, are variously called
Dene, Tinneh, Tena and Tana. They inhabit
the great river systems of the Yukon, the Kus-
kokwim and all the waterways and all the game
country in the interior, and they are usually
referred to collectively by writers on ethnology
as Athapascans.

It is one of the remarkable facts connected
with the distribution of the natives of this conti-
nent that the Tinneh of Alaska are related by
language to the Apaches and the Navajos. The
name by which the latter call themselves is Dine,
and a comparison of their vocabularies shows
that many words have a close correspondence
in the two languages and that the grammatical
structure is similar, but the resemblance is
not so close that an Indian from the Rio Grande
and one from the Yukon could understand each
other's conversation. It is doubtful whether
the Navajo and the Tinneh meeting each other
would discover that there was any relationship
between their languages. It is nevertheless a
well-known and long established fact that such
a relationship exists.

So far as their material culture is concerned,
the Tinneh Indians do not resemble either the
Apache or the Navajo. Their arts and industries

187

are entirely dissimilar. Weaving, for instance,
which is well developed among the Navajo, is
unknown among the Athapascans of the North.

There is evidence that the Alaskan Tinneh
at one time made rough pottery, fragments of
which have been found on ancient camping places
along the rivers, but the art has been completely
forgotten. They make no basketry, and birch-
bark and wood are the materials from which all
of their utensils are made. Their metal-work is
confined to the making of iron knives and spear-
heads, the material being obtained in trade from
tribes on the south coast who were formerly in
contact with the Russian traders. There is
evidence that in earlier times these blades were
made of native copper. In any case it is note-
worthy that the iron implements made by the
inhabitants of the interior of Alaska show a high
grade of workmanship. The Indians live by hunt-
ing and fishing and have domesticated the dog.
Before they adopted white man's attire they
wore a long fringed coat over leggins with mocca-
sins attached. The cut of the man's coat was
the same as that of the woman, except that the
man's was pointed before and behind and the
woman's was rounded. These garments were
made of deerskin dressed without the hair and
188

decorated with porcupine quill embroidery. Men
and women wore ornaments of Dentalium shell
obtained in trade from the tribes adjoining the
southern coast. These shells served also for
money. The Tinneh tribes have their medicine
men and sorcerers and believe in a multitude
of evil spirits. They also believe in the existence
of good spirits. The healing of the sick is within
the power of the medicine man who, by his incan-
tations and contortions, displays great zeal in
his wrestling with the evil spirits that cause
disease. Personal observations which I have
recorded in Chapter IV made it clear to me that
the Minkhotana at Lake Minchumina have images
in the intervention of which they believe. Their
belief in the efficacy of their own religious practices
has been known to survive their conversion by
the missionaries.

The different tribal divisions of the Tinneh
family occupy different territories and are desig-
nated by tribal names. Thus the people living
on the Yukon between the Sunkaket River and
the mouth of the Tanana call themselves Yukon-
ekhotana, which means the people of the Yukon,
a tribal name which ignores their neighbors
living above and below on the same stream.
The tribe that occupies the Tanana Valley call

189

themselves Tenan-Kutchin, meaning mountain
people, because that river cuts through the
mountains. All the Tinneh tribes had formerly
a common trading territory called Nukluyaket,
situated on the Yukon at the confluence of the
Tanana. On that neutral ground the Tinneh
tribes from different parts of the territory used
to meet once a year to trade. Nukluyaket is
the triangular bit of land found above the Tanana
where it joins the Yukon.

The other group of Alaskan natives with which
we are concerned is the Eskimo and they occupy
the coast from Prince William Sound on the
North Pacific all the way round the shores to
Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Their villages
are always found on the shores of the sea or
a short distance up from the mouths of the
rivers. Everywhere (except at one point on Cook
Inlet) they have kept the Tinneh away from the
coast. They are in contact with the Tinneh
tribes at many points and some fierce conflicts
are said to have taken place in the past. One
of the points of close contact was on the Lower
Kuskokwim River, where the Eskimo penetrated
more than two hundred miles from salt water
and where they completely subdued the tribe
that formerly inhabited that part of the valley.
190

This, I believe, is the farthest point to which
the Eskimo are known to have penetrated from
the coast and to have formed their own settle-
ments. This conquest was not effected without
a struggle. At the mouth of the Kuskokwim
and on the shores of its estuary there was con-
centrated until early in the nineteenth century
a large Eskimo population, people of robust
physique and energetic temperament. The river
from its source to within about a hundred and
fifty miles from the mouth presents particularly
attractive features, well adapted to the habits
of life of the Tinneh Indians, for it has good timber
with stretches of open rolling country and neigh-
boring uplands, and it was formerly a favorite
game country. This valley, therefore, became a
stronghold of what appears to have been two
closely related tribes whose members were masters
of the interior, including the divide between the
Kuskokwim and the Tanana and the country
lying over against the Alaskan range. In their
remote fastnesses in the far interior about the
head of the Kuskokwim River they were free
from intrusion, and among their neighbors on all
sides they acquired a reputation of great ferocity.
Thus the Russians, during the period of their
occupation of the coast, spoke of the Indians of

191

the Upper Kuskokwim as a fierce and warlike
tribe of whom they related many wild tales,
and who were vaguely known to them as the
Khuilchan or Kolchane, "the far away people."
This notion, working upon the imagination of
native and foreigner alike, obtained general belief
and was firmly established and preserved in
Alaskan tradition, prevailing as late as 1905.
During that year I met the Russian Bishop of
Alaska on the Yukon and when I spoke of making
a journey to the Upper Kuskokwim he gave it
as his opinion that this would be impossible on
account of the fierce and hostile Indians who
had their stronghold there and who did not
tolerate the appearance of any stranger among
them. This opinion was supported on all hands
by the white people, but not by the Indians of
the Tanana who were no longer afraid of their
western neighbors.

There is no data at all available for determining
even approximately the population of the Upper
Kuskokwim in early times. Petroff, writing in
1882, thought that the numbers at that time
did not exceed 200. It is not clear on what
ground he based his estimate. His statement
runs as follows.

"The length of the Kuskokwim is not
192

known, its headwaters having thus far been
untouched by the explorer or trader. We
have the statement of natives to the effect
that the Upper Kuskokwim River flows slug-
gishly through a vast plateau or valley,
the current acquiring its impetus only a
short distance above the village of Napaimute.
From this point down to the trading station
of Kalmakovsky and to the southern end
of the portage route between this river and
the Yukon the banks are high and gravelly,
and chains of mountains seem to run parallel
with its course on either side. This section
of the Kuskokwim valley is but thinly popu-
lated, though apparently the natural advan-
tages are far greater than on the corresponding
section of the Yukon. The soil is of better
quality, and is sufficiently drained to permit
of a more luxuriant growth of forest trees,
shrubs and herbs."
Speaking of the inhabitants of the interior,

he writes.

"The Khuilchan, or Kolchane of the Rus-
sians, occupy the vast interior mountainous
regions bordering upon the upper Kuskokwim,
the divide between the latter river and the
Tennanah in the north, the main Alaskan

193

range in the east and south, and the country
of the Nushegagmute in the west. They
are nomads, roaming about at will from river
to river, and from one mountain chain to
another, selling their skins at the trading
posts nearest their hunting grounds. This
last custom has given rise to an overestima-
tion of their number, as the same tribes have
been accounted for as trading at three or
four different stations. Their whole number
at present probably does not reach 200.
The many traditions of their treacherous
and warlike character handed down to us
by the Russians may safely be looked upon
as fabulous. Living as they do, they could
never have been a numerous people or the
cause of danger to their neighbors. It is said
that they have some permanent villages
on the headwaters of the Kuskokwim, but
no white man has ever beheld them. Such
of the women as have been seen at the various
trading stations were of repulsive appear-
ance, and gave evidence of a life of hardship
and abuse. The Khuilchan use birchbark
canoes and do not make use of the dogs as
draught animals."
In this account of the Indians of the upper
194

• I ft ~

A TINNEH INDIAN WITH SPEAR

Kuskokwim there appears to be some miscon-
ception. They are no more nomadic than the
other Tinneh tribes of Alaska and if their number
was not more than 200 in 1880, it was because
they had become greatly reduced by disease
during the quarter of a century preceding that
date. Although no exact figures can be based
on tradition, especially on tradition that does
not deal in figures, it is worthy of note that the
Indians whom we encountered on Lake Min-
chumina insisted that they had formerly been
a numerous and powerful people, that sickness
and death had visited their fathers years before
and continued to be with them till today. I
was unable to obtain a count of the inhabitants
living on the upper Kuskokwim in 1907 because
nearly all were away at the hunting. I believe,
however, that, counting those on the lake, there
are on the upper river perhaps 100 souls, hardly
more.

The native population of Alaska is not known
and there are no trustworthy methods of com-
puting it, but the whole number would, at the
present time, be small compared to the vast
areas which they inhabit.

The Tinneh tribes and the Eskimo were stated
in the census of 1880 to form an aggregate popu-

195

lation of 18,469, of whom 3,062 were said to be
Tinneh. A government report for 1903 gives
still larger figures, but on the other hand there
are very strong reasons for believing that a count
of the Eskimo and Tinneh inhabitants of Alaska
at the present time would fall very far below
these figures. Both the interior tribes and the
Eskimo have disappeared very rapidly and con-
tinuously since the discovery of the Territory.
The cause of the disappearance of the Tinneh
has been the presence of white trappers, traders
and prospectors on the rivers. The disappear-
ance of the Eskimo, which began with the dis-
covery of the country by the Russians, was
accelerated by the first cruises of the whalers
into the Arctic. In both cases the trouble has
been greatly aggravated since the discovery of
gold on the rivers of the interior and on the
beaches of Bering Sea. It has been notorious
that the attitude of the white men has been that
the native has no rights which they are bound
to respect.

The name of the river, Kuskokwim, is an Eskimo
word, the Minkhotana call it the Tichininik. It
is natural that in this case the Eskimo name
should be the one to survive because only its
lower course has been known, and because at
196

■<\

BIRCHBARK BABY-CARRIER

the time of its discovery by the Russians in 1832,
the Eskimo had taken possession of and occupied
not less than two hundred miles of its course.
From these aggressions the Tinneh, reduced in
strength, withdrew towards the headwaters where
for a time they maintained themselves in strength
and sustained the reputation for ferocity that I
have already alluded to. At what time the
ravages of disease first struck them it is impos-
sible to say, but it is probable that the beginnings
of these visitations corresponded with the appear-
ance of the Russians on the coast and the conse-
quent affliction of the old enemies of the Tinneh,
the Eskimo. Diseases introduced with terrible
effect among the Eskimo were no doubt carried
to the far interior where they swept away the
Indians in their distant fastnesses. In 1848 a
terrible epidemic of smallpox swept over Alaska,
and since that time successive visitations of
disease, becoming more frequent, have nearly
left the country of the Upper Kuskokwim with-
out a population.

The Yukon, unlike the Kuskokwim, preserves
today the name given it by the Tinneh Indians.
The Eskimo called it the Kuichbuk, which means
Big River, and by that name it was known to
the Russians until some Hudson Bay traders

197

crossed over from the Mackenzie and adopted the
name Yukon, which was used by the Tinneh
living on that river. The first Russian to enter
the Kuichbuk was Glasunoff, who, in 1833, went
up as far as Nulato. In the days of the first
traders the population living on the shores of
the Yukon, though not numerous, was much
larger than at any subsequent period. At the
present time there are only a few individuals
between the Canadian boundary and the Anvik
River, where the Eskimo territory begins. About
this point on the river the Eskimo and the Tinneh
have to a considerable extent intermingled and
where this has taken place the prevailing customs
are largely derived from the Eskimo. Even some
of the Tinneh villages that have come in contact
with the Eskimo have discarded their manners
and customs and even their language and adopted
those of the Eskimo. This condition obtains
wherever the two races have come in contact.
The Eskimo culture is the more virile and aggres-
sive and when the two meet always tends to replace
that of the Tinneh.

The Kuskokwim is not so large as the Yukon,
but it is, nevertheless, a large river. Like the
Yukon, it has discharged so much silt into Bering
Sea that a bench has been formed on the ocean
198

IMAGE USED BY THE MIXK.HOTANA

bed opposite its mouth for many miles out to
sea. The water is so shallow on this bench that
at low tide it is scarcely deep enough to float a
rowboat. Sea going vessels, therefore, cannot
enter either of these rivers and even light draught
flat-bottomed river boats have difficulty in feeling
their way through the winding sloughs and narrow
passages into the Yukon, a stream as large as the
Mississippi. The approach to the Kuskokwim
is even more hazardous.

As they near their lower courses the Yukon
and the Kuskokwim approach each other gradually
until at about ioo miles above their mouths
there remains only about twenty miles of flat
tundra between them. Moreover, there is at
this point a chain of small lakes stretching across
this neck of land and these lakes are connected
by streams, except at two short intervals. It
is possible, therefore, to pass a canoe over from
one river to the other with only two short carries.
This is what is known as the Yukon portage,
a route that from time immemorial was used by
the natives and later by the fur traders of the
lower river. According to the native tradition
it was for the possession of this passage that
the Eskimo and the Tinneh fought in the beginning
of their long struggle. This was affirmed in

199

answer to questions by the Chief at Sikmiut
and by the headmen at Ogovik. The former
possession by the Tinneh of the passage between
the rivers may account for a circumstance reported
by Dall to the effect that the Indians on the lower
Yukon, between the Anvik River and Nulato,
are members of the same tribe as those on the
lower Kuskokwim. Further than this, he in-
cludes in the same classification all the unknown
Indians on the upper Kuskokwim and the country
adjacent. To this group he applied the name
Kayukhotana, a word which he translates, Low-
landers.

While such a designation would correctly de-
scribe the inhabitants of the shores of the lower
Yukon within the limits described and to inhabi-
tants of the lower Kuskokwim living in the
region of the portage, it would hardly apply to
the inhabitants of the upper Kuskokwim or
any part of that valley above Kolmakoff. I
was not able to confirm or to disprove the accuracy
of Dall's identification of the Tinneh people on
the lower Kuskokwim with the Indians of Nulato.
If it is true that these two groups originally
formed a tribal unit, they have long ceased to
have any connection with each other. There
appears to be a conspicuous difference between

200

the fine, vigorous and thrifty people of Sikmiut
and the poor people about Anvik and Nulato.
The traditions of the Sikmiut, wherever the
Tinneh outcrop appeared through the super-
imposed Innuit stratum, pointed to the upper
Kuskokwim and away from the Yukon. That
tradition is not clear, but it is sufficient to identify
the Tinneh element at Sikmiut in its original
condition as a separate group having its own
hunting grounds and its own chief. They occupied
the Kuskokwim valley from the point where
the Eskimo held them in check up to the Istna
and including that stream. They were in touch
with and closely related to the Minkhotana who
occupied the Lake Minchumina country, the
Upper Kantishna river, and the Upper Kuskok-
wim or, as they call it, the Tichininik.

Minkhotana Numerals

i chel-ke-ka

2 teke

3 toke

4 tenke

5 cheo-lin-ala

6 nilka-toka

7 tono-no-teka

8 nilka-tenke

201

9 che-kilok-kilaye

10 che-loho-tal-ton

20 en total- ton

100 che-loho-tal-ton-tson

200 ento-ho-tal-ton-tson

II
The Kuskwogamiut

On the lower Kuskokwim River and its estuary,
from Sikmiut to the sea, live a group of Eskimo
who, in their own language, are collectively called
Kuskwogamiut, which simply means the people
of the Kuskokwim. In speaking of a village
they usually, though not always, employ the
same ending -miut, which directs attention to
the people rather than the place. Thus the
name Mamtrelichmiut is usually employed in
speaking of a certain village. Literally it means
the people of Mamtrelich. When they were
first heard from the Kuskwogamiut were very
numerous and lived in a multitude of villages
along the banks of the river and between it and
the swampy tundra. According to trustworthy
report, some of the larger villages contained more
than a thousand inhabitants each.

The first European to come in contact with
202

TWO VIEWS OF A BIRCHBARK VESSEL MADE BY THE SIKMIUT

the Kuskwogamiut was Korsakoff, who visited
the mouth of the river in 1818. Kolmakoff, the
commander of the fort at Nushagak, followed in
1820, but neither of these casual visits left any
mark upon or established any connection with
the native. In 1832 Lukeen built his post 200
miles from the mouth of the river. In 1835
Kolmakoff traveled overland from Bristol Bay
to Norton Sound, crossing the Kuskokwim at its
mouth. In the same year Glasunoff explored the
mouth of the river and visited Lukeen. In 1841
Lukeen's fort became the redoubt of Kolmakoff
and continued to be used as a trading post till
1866, when it was dismantled. During the years
from 1835 till the first decade of the twentieth
century occasional traders came in contact with
the Kuskwogamiut at isolated points, but these
points of contact were very few and far between.
Kolmakoff was situated at the apex of their
domain, where there was only an outlying popula-
tion inhabiting a few scattered villages. The
main population was congregated in numerous
villages, almost contiguous to each other along
the shores of the funnel-shaped mouth where the
river discharges into the bay and on the numerous
sloughs and waterways that wind endlessly over
the low lying and swampy tundra.

203

The whalers gave this part of the coast a wide
berth owing to the shallow waters that stretch
for miles outside the mouth of the river, and the
Kuskwogamiut thus escaped the harsh and fatal
experiences inflicted on many of the unfortunate
people from Norton Sound to Point Barrow and
eastward to Herschel Island as a consequence of
the periodical visits of the whalers. As for the
gold hunters, both on account of the difficulty of
approaching the mouth of the river, and on
account of the wild stories about the fierce natives
of the upper river, they did not reach the Kus-
kokwim till 1907, a date which, by chance, coin-
cides with the year of our visit.

Missionary enterprise is responsible for the
station at Bethel with its branch at Quinhagak
on the bay. Along the coast west from the bay,
at a place called Tununa, the Jesuits have a mis-
sion where Father Barnum labored for twelve
years and where he collected the material for
his grammar of the Innuit language.

When one considers the wide stretch of desola-
tion, the forlorn and pathless tundras that sweep
to the level horizon around these missions, and
when we consider that the native villages are
dotted over this wide expanse, trackless as the
ocean, it is not to be wondered at that missionary
204

A WOODEN VESSEL MADE IN TWO PIECES

A WOODEN VESSEL MADE IN A SINGLE PIECE

influence has not reached many of the Kuskwoga-
miut or left much impression on them.

Their villages are protected in a peculiar way.
The river widens out at its mouth till the in-
habitants on one bank cannot see the opposite
shore. Its muddy current, backed up by the
tide, deposits silt along the margins where the
turgid water laps the swales. Alder, willows,
small poplars and tall rank grass take root in
this soft soil and their entangled growth of roots
forms a fringe that extends only a hundred yards
on an average from the river bank. Beyond
this fringe is the oozy tundra with its rank growth
of moss many feet deep, where there is no deposit
of mud for the willows and alders to take root.
The banks thus consist of natural dykes or levees
which furnish a dry footing along the margins
of the river. On this rim many of the villages
are built. At other places there are slight rounded
elevations, dry spots on the tundra, each occupied
by a village. When the tide goes out there is
apt to be a wide stretch of mud flat and a very
oozy bank, between the river and the village
that is built on its banks, but when the tide is
high your boat comes on a level with the land.
As for the villages built near the irregular water-
ways that intersect the tundra, the tortuous

205

paths by which they are reached can be followed
only by the native himself. The stranger is liable
to get lost in the swamp.

In winter, of course, everything is different.
The river and tundra alike are covered with
snow and if you know your way you can go any-
where with dog sleds.

When we consider their natural environment,
and especially their peculiar geographical isola-
tion, it is easy to understand why the Kuskwoga-
miut have remained immune from contact with
the outside world; and it is, therefore, the more
deplorable that even their isolation did not pro-
tect them from the baneful and infectious influ-
ences of the white man's presence in Alaska.
Diseases such as smallpox, measles, pneumonia,
tuberculosis and other lethal and epidemic scourges
have from time to time been passed on through
the native communities from one part of the coast
to another until even the Kuskwogamiut in their
relative security were made to suffer.

Of course they died formerly and they always
had their diseases. There is evidence that they
often ate too much and suffered very serious
consequences. There is some reason for thinking
that they were so reckless at their winter feasts
that they sometimes ran short of provisions
206

A WOODEN VESSEL MADE IN A SINGLE PIECE

before the winter was over and starved. They
undoubtedly had other disastrous experiences
as well in the good old times, but epidemic
scourges such as those enumerated that swept
away whole villages — whole rows of villages —
in a season were unknown till the white man
came to Alaskan shores.

The older traditions of the natives mention big
villages of more than a thousand inhabitants. In
the United States Census for 1880, Petroff gives a
list of forty-one villages on the lower Kuskokwim
River and the bay with a population of 3,670. The
largest village listed had a population given as 314.

In 1907 the number of villages in the same
area was not more than twenty. Abandoned
villages strewn with bones bore witness to what
had happened. One of the worst and most
cruel visitations of the later period was an epi-
demic of pneumonia in the summer of 1900 that
must have killed a thousand on the Kuskokwim
alone and that left many villages empty. As
it was impossible for us to visit all of the inhabited
villages, I am unable to give a count of the popu-
lation, but from all the information I could
gather I was led to believe that the population
of the lower Kuskokwim from Kolmakoff to the
outer bay was not more than 2,000.

207

DRESS

In their dress the Kuskwogamiut resemble the
Eskimo of Cape Prince of Wales, but they also
present points of difference. The undergarments
are made of Arctic hare and squirrel skin with
fur inside. The outfit consists of a long shirt
with sleeves and worn outside a pair of trousers.
Over these are worn the long loose tunic with
sleeves that reaches to the ankles. In cut this
garment is much the same for men and women
except in materials. Men's tunics are usually
made of squirrel, marmot or muskrat skins.
Women's are usually made of reindeer skin very
beautifully tanned. Men's tunics are frequently
decorated with strips of wolf skin attached at
one end and hanging loose all up and down in
front and behind.

In winter this garment is provided with a
hood to draw over the head. The woman's
garment is much more elaborately and tastefully
decorated with strips of wolverine skin that
dangle in front and behind and is also in the
finer garments provided with double trimmings
of wolf and wolverine skin according to the
taste of the wearer, very much like the one pos-
sessed by the young girl at Sikmiut, whose
costume is a very good example of that of the
208

well-dressed Eskimo woman, though she herself
was a Tinneh with perhaps a small admixture of
Eskimo.

The trousers of both sexes are usually made
of deer skin, and the boots are made of deer
skin trimmed with wolf and wolverine skins
about the top. The boots of the men come up
to the knee over the trouser; those of the women
are shorter. Sometimes the hair is turned out
and sometimes it is turned in. The soles are
made of sealskin. Uppers and legs are often
very tastefully decorated with strips of dyed
leather embroidered with moosehair. Inside the
boots are worn socks made of grass. These
articles are worthy of special notice. Along the
margins of the sloughs grows during the summer
a long coarse grass. This is cut and dried by the
Kuskwogamiut and stored in bundles for subse-
quent use in the manufacture of socks, mats,
screens in the houses and sails for the skin boats.
These are made by the women, and they are
very well and neatly made. The grass socks
are the warmest and most comfortable covering
for the feet that any people have yet devised.
It is the only thing that will keep the feet warm
during very cold weather in the snow. If you
haven't a pair of grass socks you may take a

209

bunch of dry grass as a substitute. Among the
Kuskwogamiut everybody wears grass socks.

For wet weather, waterproof garments are
made of seal gut sewed together in long strips.
This waterproof coat is another Eskimo inven-
tion that deserves careful attention. It is worn
over the furs, it weighs nothing, it has a hood
attached and will not leak. Waterproof boots
and even coats are made also of salmon skin and
this material is used very extensively for making
waterproof bags. Sealskin with hair removed
and well oiled is used for the best waterproof
boots.

Men's and women's tunics are sometimes made
of bird skins, the men's usually of the skins from
the breasts of geese and the women's from the
skins of the breasts of various ducks. These
garments are often very beautiful.

A women's workbag contains always an assort-
ment of sinews taken from the white whale, the
walrus or the deer. These are shredded and
twisted into thread and used for sewing. It
also contains needles made of ivory, thimbles
of tough seal skin, bodkins, needle-case of bone
or ivory and the uluok or woman's knife.

Among the Kuskwogamiut the men wear labrets,
one in either side of the lower lip. They are
210

A WOMAN S COAT MADE OF DUCK SKINS

made of ivory or of stone. The men and women
alike wear earrings of ivory and beads. Elaborate
headgear is sometimes worn by the women when
they dress up. An example is shown on plate
facing page 220. It belonged to the same woman
that owned the precious birdskin coat shown oppo-
site this page. Both these articles would be re-
served by the owner for the dances, festivals and
other great occasions in which the Kuskwogamiut
delight, which take an important place in their
social life and make up a large part of each
winter's programme.

FOOD

The Kuskwogamiut, like their Innuit brethren
everywhere, are children of the sea; they look
to the sea for their living and not to the land.
The mountains are the abode of spirits, hostile
to mankind, lying in wait for the hunter. On
the other hand, they enjoy the freedom of the
sea, which is their favorite hunting ground.
The whale has always been the principal quarry
of these hunters of the deep. When the ice
breaks loose in June and the open water of Bering
Sea appears, the strong men of each village pre-
pare themselves by a ceremony in the kozgee,
an event that I would have done much to see.
After the ceremony the hunters, still in ceremonial

211

trappings, bring the umiaks or big sea-going boats
down to the shore ice, in accordance with a ritual,
on the strict observance of which depends the
success of the whale hunt.

Meanwhile solitary scouts in their kyaks have
gone out to sea to look out for whales. As soon
as a kyak returns reporting a whale, the waiting
crews launch the umiaks and go in pursuit. The
best and most successful harpoonist in each crew
stands in the bow on the lookout; the rest of
the crew, eight or ten men, work the paddles.
It is a great honor to capture a whale and the
most successful hunter occupies a proud position
in his village. When the carcass of a whale has
been towed ashore there is great rejoicing and
much feasting. It is cut up and the meat placed
in the caches for the winter's supply.

Next to the whale, the most important big
game is the walrus, which is speared on the floe
ice as it moves in detached masses southward
through Bering Sea in the autumn.

The hair seal frequents the shallow waters of
Kuskokwim Bay and is speared from the light
kyaks. The chief food product derived from
the seal is the oil which is stored in large bags
made from the skins of the same animal. A
supply of seal oil put up in this way is always

212

A MAN S COAT MADE OF SKINS OF GEESE

on hand and furnishes one of the staple articles
of diet. It is used in connection with dried fish
and other mixed dishes.

Deer's meat, which used to be plentiful, is
now scarce and highly prized. The tallow is a
great delicacy and those who would indulge in
the luxury must pay for it. It is an article of
trade, passed from one place to another at good
profit in skins or other commodities.

Geese and ducks breed in great numbers in
the tundras, and in season they are hunted either
with the bow and arrow or by means of the
bolas, a kind of sling made of ivory balls attached
to strings, all of which are united at the other end.

Fish, especially the king salmon, are taken
in nets and in traps and dried or smoked. In
winter tomcod are caught through holes in the
ice with hook and line and with traps.

Besides these items furnishing the staple food
supply, there are certain delicacies and prepared
dishes, each appropriate to the season. The
eggs of the geese are gathered and allowed to
lie outdoors till they suit the taste, when they
are eaten boiled. By another method the eggs
are gathered when they are nearly hatched and
then they are placed in the pot.

In the salmon fishing season the heads of the

213

salmon are placed in a pit till they become putrid
and full of life under the sun's rays; they are
eaten with great relish. I do not know whether
more civilized epicures have devised anything
so high as this dish.

On the tundra there grows a berry about the
size of a gooseberry and of a pale yellowish pink
color. It is known as salmon berry. These
berries are gathered in season and stored. They
are used for making some very choice dishes. One
of these is called kamamok and is compounded
of cold storage fish roe, cold storage old seal oil
and cold storage salmon berries mashed together.

Akutok is even more refined. The cold storage
again furnishes the principal ingredients; this
time salmon berries, seal oil and deer tallow.
These are boiled together and afterwards cooled
by mixing in fresh snow and whipping the whole
mixture up into a kind of thick cream.

In their natural condition the food supply
of the Kuskwogamiuts was abundant and, as
will be seen from the above, existed in a good
many varieties. The reduction of the food
supply, together with the effects of disease, both
due to foreign influence, must be held responsible
for their diminished numbers and for their changed
outlook on life.
214

INDUSTRIES AND OCCUPATIONS

The principal occupations of the men are those
that have to do with getting food. The principal
occupations of the women are those that have
to do with domestic life and the making of clothing
and skin bags, weaving mats and baskets, making
pottery and the preparation of food.

The men do all the hunting and fishing; they
cut up the whale and store the skin and the
blubber, they skin the walrus and cache the meat,
they remove the skin of the seal, they boil the
meat in large wooden troughs to extract the oil.
In this latter process red hot stones are dropped
into the trough containing water and seal meat,
and continuously changed with long wooden
tongs to keep the water boiling. As the oil
rises to the surface it is skimmed off and stored
in skins.

The men also gather driftwood and split it
up for use as fuel in the kozgee. They make the
wooden kantuks or dishes, the wooden spoons
and ladles and the snowshoes; they are also the
ivory workers and make all the utensils and
ornaments in which this material, obtained from
the walrus, is employed. The articles of domestic
use made of ivory consist of bows for working
drills, snow knives, needlecases, bag handles

215

and fasteners for bags and for clothing. The
men make the lip ornaments of ivory and of stone.
They make the little dolls of wood and ivory,
and they are the artists who decorate with lively
pictures of the chase and other scenes the ivory
implements which are sometimes very taste-
fully wrought and are in fact objects of beauty.
The men also paint pictures on the insides of the
kantuks and they study and execute picture
writing.

The women too have their artistic interests
and cultivate the fine arts in several depart-
ments: beadwork, artistic leather work and
embroidery on skin. The women make the
charms of pieces of whale meat sewed up in skins
that are worn by the hunters. The men make
the amulets of stone in animal form that are worn
by both sexes.

The heaviest work of the women is the dressing
of skins for clothing. Seal, deer, squirrel and
muskrat skins have to be dressed in the summer
for making clothes in the winter. Seal skins
have also to be prepared without the hair for
boot soles and for waterproof boots. Salmon
skins have also to be prepared for waterproof
bags and even sometimes for waterproof gar-
ments. The women prepare also the seal gut
216

and cut it into long strips for making the fine
waterproof coats. All this heavy work has to
be done in the short summer. During the summer
also the women make the pottery lamps and
pots from clay obtained somewhere on the tundra
or along the river bank. The clay is worked
into a thick paste and shaped by pressure of
the hands and a small paddle. Simple lines or
dots are impressed on the pots for decoration
sometimes, and at other times a symbolic device
is incised on one side. These pots are of different
sizes and are used for cooking. The lamps are
saucer shaped and are usually decorated in the
interior with concentric circles or else with char-
acteristic symbolic devices. This pottery is
only very lightly burned in an open fire made of
driftwood. Its texture is coarse and the walls
have to be made thick to gain sufficient strength.

During the winter the men make their sleds,
their weapons and implements, prepare quantities
of long line from walrus hide for the harpoons,
for snowshoes and for dog harness; they make
the wooden utensils in which their food is served
and they keep alive all those industrial arts and
aesthetic pursuits that pertain to the sphere of
men's activities during the winter.

The kyak or skin canoe has a frame of wood

217

put together with lashings of walrus hide. The
covering of walrus hide that encloses the frame,
leaving only a hole in the middle for the man with
the paddle, is removed in the autumn and stored
during the winter. The repairing of these cover-
ings, putting the frames in order and replacing the
coverings are jobs for the first days of spring.

The big angiaks or open boats have their much
heavier frames also made of wood, the separate
parts being lashed together. They also have
their coverings of walrus hide removed during
the winter and replaced during the first days of
spring. The dog sleds are about eight feet long,
made of wood and shod with ivory. In the winter
the women are busy making clothing, boots,
waterproofs, baskets, mats and in decorating
the various garments with embroidery and the
application of bits of leather in different color.
(They have a few simple dyes by which they get
brown, yellow, black and red.) These colors,
combined with the white dressed leather or with
the furs in their varied natural colors, produce
very handsome effects. Birdskin garments are
often decorated by small strips of skin taken from
the birds' feet and dyed yellow; these are attached
in the form of tassels at the interstices of the
skins where they are sewed together.
218

BB -

A PAIR OF GRASS SOCKS

The sewing is all done with ivory needles and
with thread that the women make from the
sinew of the white whale, the walrus and the
deer.

In all this domestic economy the preparation
of food plays a relatively small part, and though
it falls to the share of the women, it does not
add much to their labors, because they eat so
much of their food in a raw state. Their various
occupations keep the men and women busy during
the long winters.

WEAPONS

The armory of the Kuskwogamiut is a com-
prehensive one. The largest weapons are heavy
harpoons with long wooden shafts and fore-
shafts of ivory, armed with an ivory head tipped
with an infixed blade or point of flint. This
head has an ingenious releasing device and is
attached to a long line of walrus hide. When
the head has been sunk in the skin of the whale,
the shaft can be drawn back into the boat by
means of its own line while the head is secured
to the boat by a strong line that can be paid out
or drawn in according to the circumstances.

Spears of different types are used for walrus
and for seal. The lighter seal spears are thrown

219

by means of a throwing stick that is a part of
every hunter's equipment. A light wooden spear
armed with three prongs of ivory is used with
the thrower for hunting birds, and a similar
spear is sometimes used for fishing. In fowling
the principal weapons are the bird bola of ivory
balls and sinew strings, and the bow and arrows.
In hunting deer or any large land animal, there
is a big powerful wooden bow backed with braided
sinew very ingeniously applied in strands. The
arrows are equipped with ivory foreshafts and
long sharp flint points. The same bow is used
in fowling, but the arrows are either blunt bolts
or ivory pointed. In fishing this bow is employed
again with a different type of arrow, either a
single long notched lance-like point or three
slender notched prongs spreading in triangular
fashion. For fishing through the ice there is a
very cleverly made fishhook with a sinker of
ivory and stone with some bits of color that act
as a lure. The lines used with these hooks are
made of whalebone because the water will not
freeze to this material.

Snares and traps are used for ptarmigan, hare,
muskrat and squirrel. The characteristic snare
is an adaptation of the running noose and is
made of whalebone.

220

A WOMAN S HEADDRESS

TOOLS

Among the tools that find employment among
the Kuskwogamiut a special honor and distinction
attaches to the great axe that is found in every
kozgee. This axe is in itself an institution closely
associated with the communal life of the kozgee.
A certain sacredness, the full force of which I
was not able to learn, attaches to this implement.
It is called Kalthkapok (Big Raven) and it is
made of a large walrus tusk chipped and ground
to an edge at one end and lashed to a stout handle
of wood by means of strong walrus hide thongs
like an adze. Its use, which I was particular
to inquire about, was solely to split up the wood
used to make the fires in the kozgee. This wood
must not be divided by any other implement.
The Kalthkapok is always kept in its place in
the kozgee.

Adzes of stone and especially of jade or nephrite
are used in working wood and ivory. These
vary in size from small ones with blades half
an inch long to the longer ones with heavy blades
six inches or more in length.

Hammers with heads of jade or other hard
stone have handles of ivory, bone or antler well
fitted and firmly lashed to the middle so that
they are double bitted.

221

An implement consisting of a long pole with a
contrivance at the end made up of a bone ring
with a mesh of whalebone is used as an ice scoop
to keep the fishing hole free from ice in winter.

The ice pick is a stout stick shod on one end
with a strong ivory spike.

Each man has his workbox, an oblong or oval
box averaging about a foot in length and some-
times very tastefully inlaid with ivory and with
a lid that is kept in place by rawhide hinges and
a lashing of rawhide that slips over an ivory
catch in front. In this box will always be found
the man's knife, formerly made of jade or flint
but now almost invariably made of a bit of iron
fastened to a handle of bone. The shape is
always the same — a short curved blade on a
long handle. In the box will also be found a
bow drill in three parts, a scraper, a flint chipper,
a few pieces of graphite for marking, a whet-
stone, a pair of wooden goggles to protect the
eyes from the glare of the sun on the ice in the
spring, a tobacco box and various miscellaneous
articles.

Every woman has her workbag. In it will
be found the uluok or woman's knife, a half
moon shaped blade of iron or of jade inserted
in an ivory or wooden handle. With this, the
222

A GROUP OF KUSKWOGAMIUT BASKETRY

bag will be sure to contain a bone or ivory needle
case with ivory needles, and tastefully decorated
by engraved lines — a present from husband,
brother or lover — a small ivory box with lid for
holding small articles of value, a wooden case
for holding earrings, several pairs of earrings,
a hank of sinew for making thread and a thimble
or two in addition to some miscellaneous articles.
The woman's bag is a small pocket with a long
flap to roll up when the bag is closed. It has a
thong, on the end of which is an ivory bar for
a fastener. This bar is very beautifully made
and decorated and, like the needle-case and the
little ivory box, is a present from some man.

A woman usually has a sealskin bag like a
shopping satchel with an ivory handle and also
a fishskin bag tastefully made, for her spare
clothes. The workbaskets made of grass with
covers are very neat and well made and often
have simple patterns in materials of a different
color woven in for decoration.

THE HOUSE (iNNA)

The houses of the Kuskwogamiut are built of
logs over a shallow excavation. The timbers
are cut to an even length and placed in a vertical
position around the four sides. On these walls,

223

a pyramidal roof is supported and covered with
turf on which moss and long grass may grow at
will. In the center of the peak is a small opening
for light and for ventilation. This hole may be
closed when desired by a frame with a sheet
of seal intestine which lets in light and keeps out
the weather.

A covered passage or tunnel leads from the
middle of one side and connects with a vestibule
several yards from the house. To enter the house
one enters the vestibule, passes through the
tunnel and emerges from the inner end of the
tunnel.

On each of the other three sides of the house
is a raised bench about six feet wide against the
wall. The rear platform, opposite the entrance,
is a place of honor. All three platforms are
covered with grass mats. The side platforms
are divided into sections or compartments by
means of woven grass screens suspended from
the roof. In these compartments the different
members of the family sleep and procure privacy.
All the central area of the floor is the bare ground.
When a wood fire is required it is kindled in the
center of this area.

The clay lamps by which the house is lit at
night are heavy saucers about eight inches in
224

diameter. They are half filled with seal oil with
floating wicks of moss trimmed on the edge of
the rim. The lamp is either placed on a wooden
stand about eighteen inches high or else it hangs
from the roof in a sling made of grass rope.
Both these methods are in use.

The cooking pots when in use are placed directly
in the fire.

THE KOZGEE

The kozgee is a magnified and glorified inna,
but its architecture differs in some important
respects from that of the house. It is sunken
deep in the earth and is in fact a large dug-out
lined and roofed with logs and entered through
a tunnel with one end in the fire pit at the center
and the other end connecting with a covered
vestibule a little distance away in the landscape.

The floor of the kozgee is made of rough hewn
logs. In the center these logs are movable over
an area about eight feet square. This space is
occupied by a fire pit. When the fire pit is not
in use, the logs are replaced. Halfway between
the floor and the front wall there is an oval man-
hole in the floor connecting with the tunnel.
When you enter the kozgee you pass through
the outer entrance which lets you down by steps

225

to the floor of the vestibule. You then enter
the tunnel in a stooping posture and when you
arrive at the hole in the floor you stand upright.
Your head and shoulders are then in the interior
and the rest of you is below. You then place
your hands on the floor and draw yourself up.
To go out you lower yourself through the hole.

The size of the kozgee varies; the largest
that I saw was the one in a deserted village at
the mouth of the river. It measured forty feet
square, but some, I believe, are much larger and
again some are smaller. I was told of a ruined
village on the bay with a kozgee more than twice
as large as the largest I saw. Ogovik had a good
sized one and that at Ohagamiut was also large.
I do not know if there is at this time any village
with more than one kozgee, but we were told
by the old people at Mamtrelich and Ohagamiut
that in old times the populous villages had many
kozgees.

Everything in the kozgee is carefully arranged
according to rule. About the four sides against
the wall is a bench three feet high made of rough
hewn planks supported on posts. At a height
of about four feet above this a broad shelf is like-
wise carried round the four sides. In some
cases there is a third and narrower shelf still
226

higher up. When the kozgee is full of people
to witness some spectacle or to celebrate a festival
these shelves are all lined with people closely
packed together, the boys occupying the upper
shelf all the way round.

It would take a volume to describe all the
uses of the kozgee. In the first place, it belongs
to the men of the village. The bachelors all
live there and each man has his assigned place.
It is also the place where strangers are enter-
tained if they are men. It is, besides, the work-
shop, clubhouse, playhouse, lodge and bath of
the village. No cooking is ever done in the
kozgee. When meal time comes each man has
his food brought to him by one of his female
relations (mother or sister or wife), who passes
it up through the floor in kantuks. She must
not enter the kozgee. Afterwards the women
return, one by one, and the empty dishes are
passed out to them. Only when the festivals
and dances are held do the women enter the
kozgee. Then they are present both as spectators
and as performers.

To prepare the sweat bath the logs are removed
from the fire pit and the big axe is used to split
up a pile of wood into thin fagots. The men
only indulge in the frivolity of the sweat bath.

227

They are very fond of it. I believe that in all
probability the women consider it a waste of good
firewood. The women never acquired club houses
of their own; they are, however, mistresses in
their own homes and they are content to stay
there.

CLEANLINESS

The problem of keeping clean under the condi-
tions of life that obtain in such a community
as a Kuskwogamiut village is a serious one. It
cannot be said that the people are clean in their
persons or in their houses. Indeed, according
to some standards, they are dirty and they find
it impossible to rid themselves of vermin. I
doubt whether this is due to a disposition to be
dirty so much as to necessity. Father Barnum,
the gifted and courageous author of the Inniut
grammar, who lived in a village about a hundred
miles from the Kuskokwim on the coast, gives
an illuminating account of his own experiences
in a letter printed for private circulation in 1893.
The passage to which I have reference is a classic
that deserves to be better known, and I there-
fore reproduce it here by permission.

"In Alaska, the louse and the missionary
are 'one and inseparable,' of course this
intimacy is entirely due to the obstinate
228

infatuation of the louse. In the beginning,
the missionary rejects the overtures of the
insinuating insect, and seeks to avoid com-
panionship, but his efforts are in vain, the
louse will not be repulsed; the intimacy
is inevitable. Humiliating as the confession
may sound, it is sad but true. We are all
lousy, and we are lousy all the time! When
I landed at St. Michael's, we camped on the
bluff for two weeks, while the steamer dis-
charged cargo. Soon I noticed a little rash
which broke out on my neck. I paid no
attention to it, expecting that it would soon
pass away. Next I became convinced that
I had caught the itch; I knew nothing about
lice then, and so I felt badly over 'my itch/
but determined not to say anything about
it to Fr. Tosi, until after the steamer had
left the port, for I did not want to be sent
back. Keeping quiet when with the fathers
was a trial too hard to describe. One day,
however, I had to rub a speck on the shoulder
of my coat, and a father remarked 'So you
have gotten some already,' and added, to
my great amazement, 'that his were worrying
him.' That settled it, I could remain in
Alaska, and could scratch freely, morning,

229

noon and night. It is impossible to keep
free from these pests. New comers try it
but soon give it up. Every time you enter
a casine you get a fresh supply. Every
native who comes near you leaves you a
fresh contribution. The chapel is full of
them after every service. When you visit
the sick or come in contact with the people
in any way, you are bound to catch them,
and they abound the whole year. We simply
have to get used to them and be satisfied
with keeping the number down by constant
vigilance. 'I have just killed fifty,' is a
common remark. Let me suggest here, in
parentheses, — Do not bring gray underwear
up here; crede experto, there is not contrast
enough. You may say, 'this is perfectly
horrid, why don't the fathers wash?' It
is horrid, I know, and promptly admit,
but still these are facts Alaskan; now about
washing, there's the rub! Their apparel,
which consists of a fur 'parki' and a pair
of long boots, is never subjected to the ordeal
of the wringer and mangle."
I am sure that this Homeric passage will rouse

responsive feelings in every true Alaskan and

make him homesick for the north.

230

CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS

Each family occupies its own separate house.
Though a man may have more than one wife,
the practice of polygamy is not encouraged.
Each village manages its own affairs. As among
the Innuit everywhere, each village has its head
man, who takes the lead in all matters by general
consent. The medicine man, called UNGULKUK,
does not acquire any great authority, though he is
respected on account of his supposed power over
spirits. There are many evil spirits abroad every-
where ready to make mischief, and they must be
circumvented, hence the necessity of observing
many customs that seem incomprehensible to the
stranger. There is a devil called TUNOOK and a
good spirit called UNOELRAH. There is an abode
of the dead whence the spirits may be called to
take part with the living according to a well regu-
lated process. Feasts are given in honor of the dead
at intervals of five year periods at which they are
believed to be actually present in the kozgee.

Story telling, play acting and singing songs
made for the occasion are among the diversions.
Crime is very rare and acts of kindness and
devotion are common.

The raven among the animals that figure in the
myths appears to have been a great hero.

231

The Mammoth, the bones of which are some-
times found buried in the tundra, formerly lived
in the sea, but he was driven out by a monster
called AGLU, the whale's partner, much more
powerful than the whale. He has long teeth
and his jaws work horizontally. When Keelugbuk
(the Mammoth) was driven out of the sea by
Aglu he was so heavy that he sank in the land
and went swimming through the earth as he
had formerly done in the sea, but being unable
to get enough food underground, he eventually
died and his kind became extinct.

They tell stories too of a great sea serpent,
though there are no snakes in Alaska, and they
have old ivories with pictures of all these animals.
I procured, near the mouth of the Yukon in 1905,
from an old man, an ivory bow for a drill. It
was yellow with age and worn from use in the
hand. The owner said that he counted eleven
generations that it had been in his family. It
had not been made by forebears of his, but was
already old when it came into the possession of
a direct ancestor eleven generations back. On
it are engraved pictures that he identified as
those of Aglu, Keelugbuk, Tunook and a big deer
now extinct.

There are also pictures of men and walrus and

232

whales and deer and trees and villages on this
old relic.

STORY TELLING

The men are the story tellers and the custodians
of legends. In this they manifest a great interest
and much skill. The stories are learned by the
young men from their elders, carefully memorized
and practiced with much industry and attention
to detail. The same story is always told in the
same words, with the same intonations and the
same gestures. If a story teller makes a mistake
some one among his hearers is sure to correct
him. Some of the stories are very long and
occupy hours in the telling. Many of them refer
to the doings of mythical beings, animals and
men, and these stories may be said to constitute
a body of epical literature that is rich in expedient
and striking in form.* A good story teller always
finds an audience and though the story be old
they never tire of hearing it. A collection of
these tales would fill many volumes.

There is a long cycle of myths about the Raven
as the creator and teacher that forms an epic

* According to Nelson the same body of myths are the com-
mon property of all the Eskimo of the Coast up as far as Cape
Prince of Wales. Bureau of American Ethnology, ANNUAL
REPORT.

233

of extraordinary interest. A young man at the
Bethel Mission volunteered to relate the story
of the Raven for me. He told a section each
day, but he had not finished when we left.

The part played by the Raven in the mythology
and in the social life of the Kuskwogamiut finds
its parallel among the Tlingit of the Southeast
Coast, a thousand miles away as the crow flies.
Yehl, the Raven among the latter people, is also
a culture hero, and each clan in a village usually
has one house that takes his name; Yehlhit
or Raven House. There is no such social organi-
zation among any of the Eskimo as is found
among the Tlingit, but a ruined village on the
lower Kuskokwim had the name Kalthka (Raven)
and its vanished inhabitants were known as
Kalthkamiut (Raven People). I have elsewhere
mentioned that the sacred axe of the kozgee
is called Kalthkapok: Big Raven.

There is another class of stories that is the
property of the women. They are simple animal
stories that they tell the children.

DRIFTWOOD

Wood is used by the Kuskwogamiut for the
construction of their houses, frames of their
kyaks and angiaks, dog sleds, harpoon shafts,

234

bows and arrows, kantuks or wooden dishes,
for the fires of the kozgee and for a variety of
minor purposes. With the exception of the
few villages about Kolmakoff they get their
supply of wood from the sea. Trees torn from
the river bank in the interior by the spring floods
are carried out to sea and after being afloat per-
haps for months are brought in and deposited
on the beaches by the tides. By this time the
logs are well seasoned and ready to be worked.

TRADE

A certain amount of trade is carried on between
the Eskimo communities and also between the
Eskimo and the Tinneh. The Tinneh tribes
make the best kantuks and these, together with
birchbark vessels, are traded to the Eskimo.
Deer skins and deer tallow are also articles of
barter. Wolverine skins required for the trim-
ming of the women's fur garments come to the
Kuskwogamiut from long distances in trade.

The gatherings which take place in the winter
at the Eskimo villages when distant villages are
invited to take part have the effect of stimulating
trade relations.

235

APPENDIX C
The Language of the Kuskwogamiut

The language of the Kuskwogamiut does not
differ in any material respect from the Innuit in
other parts of Alaska. The differences are slight
and consist in pronunciation and to an even less
extent in vocabulary. The grammatical structure
is uniform.

The study of this language has been well done
by Father Francis Barnum.* It is, therefore, not
worth my while to discuss it. From the material
that I gathered I simply give two short vocabu-
laries that may serve for comparison.

SIKMIUT

I

Ataujuk

2

Malruk

3

Pingayun

4

Stamun

5

Taliman

6

Agovinlugu

7

Malrunlugu

8

Pingayunlugu

* INNUIT LANGUAGE by Francis Barnum, S.J.
236

9 Kulunritaran — one from ten

10 Kulun

ii Kula ataujimuk chiplugu — ten and one

12 Kula malruk chiplugu — ten and two

13 Kula pingayun chiplugu — ten and three

14 Kula stamun chiplugu — ten and four

15 Agimiuk

16 Agimin ataujimuk chiplugu — fifteen and one

17 Agimin malruk chiplugu — fifteen and two

18 Agimin pingayunuk chiplugu — fifteen and

three

19 Uinunritaran — one from twenty

20 Uinuk — a man

21 Uinuk ataujimuk chiplugu — twenty and one

22 Uinuk malruk chiplugu — twenty and two

23 Uinuk pingayun chiplugu — twenty and three

24 Uinuk stamun chiplugu — twenty and four

25 Uinuk taliman chiplugu — twenty and five

30 Uinuk kulunuk chiplugu — twenty and ten

31 Uinuk kulunuk chiplugu ataujimuk chiplugu

— twenty and ten and one

40 Malruk epeat — two men

50 Malruk epeat kulunuk chiplugu — two twen-
ties and ten

100 Taliman epeat — five men

500 Uinun talimanuk epeat chiplugu — twenty
times twenty five

237

Sikmiut Vocabulary
Kingukleoka, brother
Neagaka, sister
Artuga, father
Anuga, mother
Nulichga, married man
Uinga, bachelor
Araiavvik, chief
Eidpaka, partner
Umaluchdut, plenty
Pedeiduk, all gone, it is finished
Muk, water

Mukeiawik, bath-house (literally watering-place)
Mukeiunga, to wash (literally to water)
Kofchinik, how much
Anogwa, wind
Napat, woods
Tonot, picture •
Patiktuk, tobacco
Puluchtuduk, pipe
Uluok, woman's knife
Plajinok, string
Aihruk, cat's cradle
Kasachtawok, larger log house
Amireek, fish skin boots
Shakalok, sugar
Pachguluk, bark basket
238

Kaluviak, wooden dish made in two parts

Ugaiuk, wooden dish dug out

Tultuk, flat bark dish

Chowot, blueberries

Kokiuk, a kind of salmon like the dog salmon

Ikaialuk, dog salmon

Ishalok, porcupine

Koftsitsok, marten

Imogamukdok, mink

Tuntu, caribou

Tuntuok, moose

Kaymuchta, dog

Paloktok, beaver

Iligawok, muskrat

Chuginiok, otter

Kongainok, squirrel

Kubwiok, fox

Treikunyok, wolverine

Kugilunuk, wolf

Kaymuch kaiuk, little dog

Olumuk, bow

Unadit, hand

Tali, arm

Itagat, foot

I row, leg

Usuk, head

Ung, eye

239

Kungok, nose
Chin, ear
Kanuk, mouth
Kudikt, teeth
Auok, blood
Nutaak, white fish
Taiukbuk, kingsalmon
Ulik, blanket
Na, house

Kozgee, dance house
Hon, canoe
Ingilok, bed

Platikok, tent

Igummok, sled

Kurok, cache

Irarluk, moon

Chishluk, calendar

Aguchda, sun

Hlilabuk, rain

Tangaluk, snow-shoe

Kubiukiunok, moosehide thong

Atkuk, the native coat

Kaimuksok, woman's boots

Malachiok, cap

Airoktat, glove

Aleeman, mitten

Plumon, skin scraper

240

Snok, river

Ingarak, mountain

Cosit, white man

Oginut. woman

Nikalingut, baby

Stoluk, bench

Unamuk, today

Ayuchtoa, I go

Ayalchouunga, I went

Ayuchchukoa, I will go

Ayuchtudn, you go

Ayalchoudn, you went

Ayuchchukoudn. you will go

Ayuchtuk, he goes

A\ alchouk. he went

Ayuchchugouk, he will go

Ayuchtut, they go

Ayalchout, they went

Ayuchchugout, they will go

Ayagadachtoa, I am going to go away

Ayuchtoa Mamtrelich nnin, I am going to Mam-
trelich

Ayalchouunga Mamtrelich mun. I went to Mam-
trelich

Ayuchchukoa Mamtrelich mun, I will go to Mam-
trelich

Ayagachtoa, I am going immediately

-4i

Ayachtognarchtoa, I go quickly
Ayangsatoa, I go slowly
Ayagfalirchtoa, I go far
Ajuchtuk, good
Ajuchtukiouk, a good man
Chamai, form of greeting
Toingunaiduk, good bye
Tadugaluk, black bear
Tagouka, brown bear
Nutchtoa, I shoot
Nutchtudn, you shoot
Nutchtok, he shoots

MAMTRELICHMIUT VOCABULARY

Mamtrelichmiut, the people of Mamtrelich

Achluk, whale

Tuntuok, caribou

Tuntu, reindeer

Kaymuchta, dog

Kantuk, large wooden dish

Kanchugach, small wooden dish

Uiluk, small wooden spoon

Ipun, large wooden spoon

Agumuk, basket

Kanohuk, lamp (pottery)

Kanoadjoch, small lamp

Agumadjoch, little basket

242

Uiludjoch, small little spoon
Mikchoyok, small one
Mikuk, small
Asituk, bad
Ankeituk, 'tis a pity
Asitkapichtuk, very bad
Chuknuk asituk, very bad
Kofchijoch, marten
Imogamenchduk, mink
Tagouka, brown bear
Tannigagale, black bear
Tunguilara, black
Unuk, night
Ugunuk, day
Aguchta, sun
Igaaluk, moon
Tannaguk, dark
Tannagechtuk, daylight
Unnuok, dawn
Agunuk, woman
Agunuk kogoluk, old woman
Najanaluk, little girl
Tannaganaluk, little boy
Unadit, hand
Itgut, foot
Talik, arm
Eruk, leg

243

Kanguk, nose

Kanuk, mouth

Nunyut, hair

Kamiakuk, head

Uiakut, neck

Awk, blood

Whee, I

Ichlpik, you

Ihlhee, he

Ihleid, they

Eidpaka, partner

Eidpanee, next one

Chikeringuh, give me

Nitka, my house

Nin, your house

Inni, his house

Aginuk, skin boat

Uk, man (singular)

In, men (dual)

Iut, men (plural)

Akleitik, earrings

Ingavit, mountains

Taghoyammaghrotik, finger mask

Urok, dance

Ashuchtuk, good

Anguk, big

Angavichtuk, too big

244

Kaningsuchta, poet or story teller

Ungulkuk, medicine man

Anuganuk, evil spirits

Tunook, devil

Unoelrah, a good spirit

Ayuchtoa, I go

Ayuchtudn, you go

Ayuchtuk, he goes

Kaylun yakschichta Ogovik, how far is it to

Ogovik
Ugunut malruk, it is two days
Ugunut pingayun, it is three days
Ugunrut amlarut, it is many days
Natmun ayuchchit, where are you going

Interpretation of Pictures on an Old
Drill Bow

Obverse

1. Aglu, the whale's partner, living in the sea.

2. Keelugpuk, the mammoth.

3. A great deer, the partner of the reindeer

living in the sea and afterwards on the
land; now extinct.

4. Amakum, the partner of the wolf living on

the land, now extinct.

5. Tunook, the devil living on the land.

245

9
io
ii

6. An extinct monster living on the land with
dark skin but no hair.
Tuntu, the deer.
Napoktuk, growing trees.
The hunter.
?

Two men making angiak.
12, 13, 14. A village with an Eskimo on top of
house.

15. A cache.

16. A deer hide stretched out on the ground.

17. Pieces of flesh.

Reverse
1, 2, 3, 4. Whale hunt with three angiaks and
two whales.

5. Walrus hunt.

6. Boat containing men with their amulets

having a good time after the walrus hunt.

7. 8, 9. Walrus hunt with two angiaks and two

walrus.

10. Whale.

11. Whale hunting boat.

12. Village.

13. Cache.

Aglu is a sea monster bigger than the whale.
246

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I [3 14 15 16 "7

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He has long sharp teeth and jaws that work
horizontally.

Keelugpuk, the Mammoth, once lived in the
sea, but was driven out by the Aglu. He was
too heavy to walk on the surface of the ground,
but he swam through the land just as he had
been accustomed to do in the sea. Keelugpuk is
now extinct, but long ago the Eskimo used to kill
and eat him when he rose to the surface of the
earth.

A great deer much larger than the caribou or
moose which formerly lived in Alaska and was
hunted by the ancestors of the Eskimo. This
animal, "the partner of the reindeer," first lived
in the sea, but was driven out, together with
Keelugpuk, by Aglu, and for a long time he con-
tinued to live on the land.

Amakum is described as a huge monster that
formerly lived on the tundra and frequented
pools.

Tunook is the devil. He is sometimes seen by
hunters on the lonely tundra.

247

UAKK

SKETCH V1AP MADE UNDER THE DIRECTION OF CHIEF
AT TANANA FOR THE AUTHOR IN IQO5

MAP 01 \L-\SK\ SHOWING

'm\ • -

MAP OF

CENTRAL ALASKA

SCALE

STATUTE MILES

25

=4

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